


you'll never change what's been and gone

by nagia



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Arranged Betrothal From Hell, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Trust, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 02:28:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3674091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honestly, Inquisitor Trevelyan would probably be a lot happier if her sister had just stuck to the assassination attempts.  She signed up for a war against a hole in the sky, not juggling a Darkspawn magister, a betrothal arranged in the deepest pits of the Void, and trying to keep her sordid past silent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"They ran out of punch," Heloise Trevelyan says, more than a touch dry. She looks away from the gardens, over at the apostate's golden eyes.

Morrigan's gaze is at once haunting and predatory. The arch of her throat, the tilt to her head: not the dog-like mannerisms she'd expect of a Fereldan — indeed, she's birdlike. But her grace as she prowls forward is not the grace of flight, or a mountain cat.

Morrigan is hawk and spider at once, and she is not just looking at Heloise, she is seeing her.

Hel adds, because it would appear she has not deflected as well as she'd hoped, "Scandalous. I'm offended."

The corner of Morrigan's mouth quirks up. "If you cope so poorly with such a minor disappointment, I do wonder how you will handle surprise."

"Equally poorly, I expect," Hel says. She sets her empty wineglass on the balcony's railing and turns her whole body to face Morrigan. "Surprise me anyway."

"Empress Celene has given me leave to accompany the Inquisition," Morrigan says. "I will join you at Skyhold when," she waves a hand through the air, at once indicating and dismissing the ball, "all this is concluded."

"That is a surprise." Hel keeps her tone even, and though she could pick up her glass again without looking — anything to keep her hands busy — she does not. "But the Inquisition gladly accepts the aid of any who offer it. You will be welcome at Skyhold."

"But not here, I see." Morrigan draws away, and curtseys even as Hel turns to keep her in sight. "I congratulate you for your victory, Inquisitor. You have been, if not kind, at least gracious. I await the day we work together."

Hel nods at Morrigan. A splash of bright red in the darkness catches her eye, and she watches as Cullen, who had been waiting in the doorway, starts forward. He passes Morrigan on the balcony and gives her a polite nod.

He moves past Hel, instead bracing his hands on the railing as he looks out over the darkened garden. Beneath them, candles in glass baubles and round white lanterns bob and twinkle, like little motes of magic, and a slow, fickle breeze carries the clean scent of lilies, the sweetness of a dozen kinds of rose, up to them. Caught between the moon and stars above, and the pinprick light below, Cullen's skin is silvered and his hair turns almost milky.

After a moment, he turns his head to keep track of her, but he doesn't say anything. She sees his eyes drift to the emptied wineglass before he looks back down to the garden.

"Quite a night," Hel offers. "How many unwanted suitors are you up to?"

That draws a chuckle from him. "A dozen and more, I think. Leliana and Josephine have some ridiculous plan to use me as bait."

"You've refused, I assume." Heloise moves forward, leaning up against the balcony next to him and ignoring the sudden squeeze in her chest, the same pang that had struck when one of them had touched him. She has no right to such feelings. However much or little she cares for him, it's best for all if she remains unattached.

The Herald of Andraste can be no mortal woman, with loves or fears. That much, Vivienne has impressed upon her. There can be no unsavory rumor about the Inquisitor and her Commander, nor any man or woman in her company. She must be beautiful and enticing, but sexless, unless and until the Inquisition decides it is advantageous for her to marry.

"I refused," he agrees, but there's a wry quirk to the scarred side of his mouth, as if he's adding, _We'll see where that gets me._ He pauses, then angles his body toward her. For a moment he stares down, even as she stares back up, and then he says, "I didn't agree with your decision, when you made it, but you've carried it out well. I know the choosing was... difficult."

Hel shrugs. "Not so difficult. Corypheus wanted Empress Celene dead. I'm growing quite used to disappointing him."

"He wanted Orlais in chaos," Cullen corrects, but then his mouth twitches into that wry smile. "Either way, you've accomplished the Inquisition's goals. And now we've the largest nation in this part of Thedas on our side."

"How much does it cost you," she says, and knows she is only wondering aloud, knows for certain he will not answer, "to admit that the Inquisition needs Orlais?"

"As the Commander of your Forces? Nothing."

Which is not, she knows, the whole answer. She presses, and then waits. "And as a Fereldan?"

"It's bitter. It could be nothing else." His gaze turns once again to the empty wineglass, or perhaps to her. His eyes look pale in the lighting.

Enough, says the tension in his broad shoulders, the tight line of his jaw. Here is far enough. Or at least, that's what she'd be saying, just now, were their places reversed.

So she turns the subject to something lighter. "Think we'll escape the dancing here?"

Cullen's mouth curls again, his entire face softening into something boyish. She wonders, idly, if he has perhaps received the same speech about what can and cannot be said to have passed between the Commander and his Inquisitor. He opens his mouth to speak, but from behind them, somebody clears his throat and says, "Alas, Inquisitor, I fear not."

As one, they turn. Next to her, Cullen tenses further, recognizing some danger that she doesn't see. All Hel sees is a dark-haired, dark-skinned man holding a pair of empty champagne flutes in one hand and a bottle in the other. He wears a black mask, lacquered and fashioned to look as if crafted from bird feathers. The dark color against his golden features makes his eyes stand out, whites and irises and all.

"You're a Crow," Cullen says. He draws forward, placing himself between the Crow and Hel, as if to be her shield wall. Without shield or sword at the moment, though, unfortunately. Hel has a sudden, wild urge to curse him for being a sentimental fool; she needs no weapon to defend herself.

"I am Ezio of Antiva City, yes," the Crow agrees. "But I have not been contracted to assassinate the Inquisitor, and even if I had, I am not fool enough to try here, in the seat of the mightiest nation in Thedas, after the Inquisitor has just made herself a darling of the Empress and her Court both." He casts Hel a smile that might have been roguish if it hadn't shown just a few too many teeth.

There is hunger in his expression. The kind of flat, naked lust that has nothing to do with the meeting and meshing of bodies, and everything to do with the sound of bodies hitting the ground. He wants her dead, Hel can see, but given he turns the expression on Cullen, as well, she gets the impression the Crow wants everybody dead as a matter of principle.

"In fact, I have a message for the Inquisitor from my Guildmaster." The smile calms down, turns from cheerfully homicidal to simply cheerful. "For her ears alone, naturally. Otherwise, I assure you, I would certainly speak to the lovely Nightingale."

"Why don't you give me a brief summary, sanitized enough that the Commander of my Forces may hear?" Hel gives Ezio her sunniest, blithest smile. "Just three words."

"Knowledge," Ezio says, then looks down at the hand carrying the bottle of champagne. He gently outspreads two fingers, just barely keeping his grip on the bottle, saying, "Target," and adds a third, "Employer."

Cullen looks between Hel and Ezio. At Hel's nod, he heads, slow and reluctant, for the entrance to the ball room. He stares at Ezio as he goes, clearly an attempt to intimidate. It doesn't seem to work; Ezio only gives him a florid bow, not spilling a drop of champagne from the bottle in his right hand.

"It is truly a pleasure to meet you, Inquisitor." Ezio gives her an equally florid, foppish bow, then moves toward her. His accent is rough, and his voice is dark and smoky. He sets the champagne flutes on the railing, then half-fills them both. "A toast, to your clear victory, and then to business?"

Hel picks up the glass nearest her. "To friendship with the Empress." She tilts the glass toward Ezio, and he clinks his own against hers.

"To friends in strange places," he agrees, and drinks.

Hel waits a beat, watching him swallow, before she lifts her own flute to her lips.

It's good champagne, crisp and velvety and light as air on the tongue. She catches a faint scent of the ocean, open and wide as the cliffs by the Storm Coast, but the notes that linger under the primary taste are more like tart apple than salt. 

"So what message from your Guildmaster?" Hel turns to face him. A fine tremor runs through her, but she forces herself to ignore it. Her tongue feels faintly thick in her mouth as she asks, "Who are your true target and employer?"

"Oh, no message from the Guild. The Guild does not speak to the walking dead." Ezio chuckles, then leans toward her, chucking a finger under her chin. He gently steadies the wineglass in her hand. "But one from House Trevelyan: this travesty of roles — first as Herald of Andraste, as if any living person save the Divine could speak for her, then as Inquisitor — will end, your Worship. One way or another."

He takes the glass from her faintly tingling fingers and tosses it into the garden, where it shatters on the stones below.

Hel has to brace herself against the balcony to keep herself upright. Her side begins to ache and feel strangely warm. Her blood throbs in her ears, in and out, a subtle slap like the waters of Ostwick's canals against its buildings.

And then her knees give out from under her. She has no idea where the Crow has gone — what a fool she was, to trust him, but he drank too — and though she tries, she can't seem to get the breath in or her legs under her enough to stand.

She looks up, bleary-eyed, at the sound of a familiar voice, only to find that the world is a spinning riot of motion and color. Hel has a vague impression of _Dorian_ before she's being lifted. She feels more than sees her arm dangling, limp. The tingling in her hands has become a true and honest pins-and-needles feeling, and is quickly ramping its way up to agony. Her body feels as if it's passed beyond her control; she is as much watching it shake and salivate as she might stand on the quay in Ostwick and watch the gondoli come and go.

Cullen's voice passes over and through her. She sees a bright red streak amidst eyelet lace afterimages. She shouldn't reach for him. Enjoying his company as much as she does is a fool's errand, and trusting him is dangerous. And yet, cradled in Dorian's arms, she tries. Her hands don't obey her, but the thought is there: Cullen. Blackwall. Her two-man _testudo_.

Urgent voices, Leliana's and Josephine's among them. 

The pins and needles move from her hands to her tongue. She cannot answer questions; she barely hears them. 

When the needles reach the base of her skull, she can no longer even scream. And when they reach her eyes, she welcomes the darkness that follows. Silence and sleep are far, far better than the nightmare of her body. 

#

She doesn't even enter the Fade, only floats in painless, soundless dark. But it can't last forever. 

Hel rises slowly, the world shifting from darkness to gray, then to colorful smears, at last sharpening into clarity. The waves in her ears abate. 

"I accept full responsibility. I should never have left her alone with him." That's Cullen's voice. She wonders what he's doing in her quarters.

Wait. Is this her quarters?

Sumptuously appointed — everywhere Hel lets her eyes roam, she sees velvet and satin and heavy-stitched brocade, gleaming mahogany and cherry wood, all limned with gilt or precious stones — but not Skyhold after all. Where is she? Frantic, she casts her mind back: the Winter Palace, a ball.

It all floods back in, the choices she made, the favor she won.

"What was in that champagne?" She groans. She stops, considers her words. Remembers a scarred mouth, lips the shape of a shortbow, and the slide of champagne. He'd drunk, too. She'd waited until she was sure he'd swallowed. "No. It wasn't the champagne."

"He destroyed your glass, Inquisitor." Leliana's Orlesian accent is back in full force. In Skyhold and Haven, it had been softer, with a touch of Ferelden and the Marches. Deliberate, or has surrounding herself in Orlesians just brought back an old way of speaking?

Hel feels her brow furrow as she considers. "So, the wineglass was poisoned? What was it?"

"Magebane." Cullen at last crosses into her field of vision. He settles himself into a straight-backed wooden chair, his posture perfect until he folds his arms over his chest. "No color, no odor, no taste, and in its purest form, it's thin and sticky."

Leliana adds, from her place in the shadows, "Perfect for coating the lip of a glass."

"Maker curse me for a fool." Hel draws in a deep breath and lets it out, heavy as her eyelids just now. "And here I thought I was being so clever. I thought Corypheus had hired them to kill someone else — maybe Florianne, if he wanted to keep Orlais in chaos and make sure she didn't talk."

Despite the way her accent softens the shapes of her words, Leliana's voice is steel-sharp when she says, "We _will_ find the person or persons who ordered this attack."

Hel shifts in the bed, awkwardly reaching behind herself. Someone swoops in, helping her push the pillows into a mound so that she can lie back without lying down. She reclines, grateful and exhausted by the effort. When she turns her head, she sees Josephine looking down at her. Josie's face is drawn with worry.

"It must be Corypheus," Josephine says, "and yet this method seems most unlike him." She doesn't look entirely right to Hel without her ever-present writing board, with its candle and lens.

Hel lets out another exhausted sigh. "It wasn't Corypheus, and there's no need to go digging, Leliana." She pauses, trying to figure how to admit this. There doesn't seem to be a delicate way to say it — or if there is, she's too tired and bitter to see it — so at last, she says, "It was a warning shot from House Trevelyan."

"But _you're_ a —" Cullen says, at the same time Leliana asks, "Are you certain?"

Josie's gaze turns sympathetic, but rather than weigh the room down with pity, she says only, "You did say you weren't on good terms with your family."

Hel shakes her head. "I'm on excellent terms with my mother, actually, and in Ostwick, that's what matters. Father may hold the title, but Mother has the blood." At the blank stares, Hel says, "Mother was born a Trevelyan. Father became a Bann through politics, but Mother is in the Book of the Worthy Families."

"Then I don't see how 'House Trevelyan' could have…?" Cullen frowns thoughtfully at her.

"My eldest sister," Heloise says, and closes her eyes, imagining Solange. How her skin was always the color of afternoon sunlight, shading into evening, just like Mother's. The cold blue eyes, the riot of shiny black curls and her delicate cheeks and nose. "Solange. Mother went to certain lengths, when I was with the Circle, and Solange never approved."

"The Crows don't come cheaply." Leliana's gaze is searching. "Hiring them to deliver a warning shot —"

"Would take great personal wealth? Solange has that. All of my generation have a share in the family fortune, which is vaster than I care to think about." Heloise can't help the wry, bitter smile that twists across her mouth. "I doubt it hurts that Solange has the full support of my father and probably her husband."

Cullen shifts in his chair and says, with the same voice he uses when predicting her chess strategies, "This won't be the end of it. No matter the history between the two of you, she'd have to be mad to hire the Crows just to deliver a rebuke. And any assassin who isn't an idiot would know that magebane isn't fatal in itself — he wanted you wounded, not dead."

"This was simply a challenge," Leliana agrees.


	2. Chapter 2

They finish out their stay in Halamshiral, if only to make it clear that the Inquisition doesn't run from a little poison, and neither does its Inquisitor. After that, they undertake the lengthy ride back to Skyhold.

During the ride, the cold crawls into Hel's bones and stays there, leaves her shivering. During one chilly night, she sits next to the campfire and shudders so hard her teeth chatter. But even though they're near the base of the Frostbacks, the cold isn't nearly so severe as it could be in Skyhold or Ferelden, and she wonders at her body's reaction. 

Cullen drops his furred coat around her shoulders. She buries her fingers in the fur-and-feather ruff, and looks up at him.

"Thank you," she tells him. "I don't — I don't understand why I'm so —"

Cullen drops onto the log next to her. He's a warm, solid weight; he practically radiates heat and traces of hot metal and leather and dog. "The magebane," he tells her. "Think nothing of it."

He stays beside her until she drowses too deeply to go anywhere but to bed. He doesn't take his coat back, and she's so exhausted she doesn't think to offer it. Instead, she falls asleep wearing it, the fur or feathers tickling her nose. She wakes with the scent of Cullen all around her.

And if she passes her fingers and wrists through the ruff before she gives the coat back to Cullen, just to revel in the feel of such softness against her skin, nobody has to know.

Indeed, if his coat smells of her, Cullen says nothing of the matter. Instead, he leaves her to ride with Blackwall, Cassandra, and Leliana. Cullen rides at Josephine's side, and there's no missing the occasional longing, envious looks Blackwall sends their way.

She hopes that's not another damnable thing to worry over. She can't really see how it's any of her affair — a Herald with no loves or fears likely shouldn't care for the entanglements of her disciples — but still, she watches.

Aside from her body's continued recovery from the magebane, the rest of the ride passes without incident.

* * *

Indeed, the next few weeks pass in blissful ease. Morrigan settles into Skyhold as if she belongs there, as if the castle was always needing an inscrutable apostate with an ancient elven mirror. Morrigan, Solas, and Dorian all have vastly entertaining arguments regarding magical theory, which Vivienne elects not to involve herself in. She suggests Hel stay out of them, too, but there are a few discussions she can't resist.

She had been a researcher, back before the Ostwick Circle fell, and some thirsts don't dry up.

Sometime in the third week after her return from Halamshiral, Hawke and her Grey Warden contact, Stroud, return from their investigations into the Western Approach. Josie makes sure both are given suitable rooms, then works to clear her desk of diplomatic correspondence. Leliana, Cullen, and Hel try to clear what military and intelligence matters they can from the war table, in hopes of focusing on the new reports from Warden Stroud and their scouts in the Approach.

Hel doesn't return to her quarters until late into that night. She feels no envy for the servants who will have to clear away all the melted wax and candle stubs from the War Room. Not, she thinks, that any of those servants would much envy her, considering how long she just spent staring at a map of Southern Thedas and making impossible decisions.

Maker's breath, toward the end of it, they'd all concluded that Lake Calenhad was shaped like a rabbit.

She peels out of her tunic and trousers the moment she closes her door behind her. Her boots and socks follow quickly after. She pads on bare feet toward one of the thick rugs Josephine picked out and wiggles her toes in the fibers.

The Frostback mountains dominate the world outside her windows, pointy teeth that threaten to bite out pieces of the night sky. Hel shakes her head at such fancy and drags her copper tub out from her closet.

She stares at it, then at the door she'd just closed. Considers all the stairs she'd have to take to get to the nearest water pump, and then considers her bed. Is it worth it to wash the day and the long hours away, or should she just collapse?

Collapse is starting to sound better and better, but then someone raps softly at the wooden door. Hel turns on her heel, pulls a dressing gown from a chair, and opens the door once she's something like presentable. If she leans a little into the doorframe, who has to know?

The woman who knocked is tiny, blonde, an elf, and carrying two pairs of large lidded buckets. The handles must be digging into her fingers, and the buckets themselves must have knocked into her knees something fierce on the way to Hel's quarters.

Hel blinks, then steps back. "I… Can I help you?" She prays not. Please let this woman just be a new hire who happens to be lost. With buckets. At an hour any sane person would be crawling into bed.

"I heard the war council didn't finish until just now," the woman says. Her voice is deep and rich, with an accent that sounds faintly Nevarran. "The Ambassador thought you might need a bath to relax?"

"Andraste bless you," Hel says, and steps out of her way. "And Andraste bless Josie for thinking of it."

The woman blushes, eyes aglow in the dim firelight, and makes her way to the tub. She pours in the water, then runs her hand along the metal ring of runes. They light up obligingly, a red that heats the red-gold copper, makes it the color of living flame in places.

"Thank you," Hel says, but the woman only smiles and heads straight for where Hel keeps her soaps. 

She pulls out a few flakes and a bottle of flower-water, then turns with a smile and offers, "I can wash your hair, if you'd like?"

It's been several days since she's bothered about it. She washed her brush this morning, but yes, she's definitely getting a touch on the greasy side. Hel ignores the feeling of disquiet and simply nods, adding a quick, but genuine, "Thank you." She unties the dressing gown's belt and makes her way, barefoot, to the tub.

Life in a Circle beats the modesty right out of its inhabitants. What with living communally as an apprentice — and no amount of money ever gave her different quarters — the presence of Templars in the baths, and the heavy punishments for attempting to "hide" anything from their constant observers, even Heloise lost any ability to be shy about her body. Even the Templars, after a year or so, seem to stop seeing nudity as having any meaning at all: people all have to get undressed sometime.

White wisps of steam curl up from the water by the time she reaches the tub. Hel drops her dressing gown on the floor next to it, and then clambers in. She closes her eyes as she settles herself, uncaring of any water that may slosh over the sides. The heat feels so good on her skin, in and under and around her, weaving comfort through exhausted muscles.

"Dip, please," the woman says in a gentle tone. Hel is reminded of what must surely have been dozens of other women saying much the same to her, back in Ostwick. Women hadn't gone into the baths alone; too many bad things could happen. Instead, they'd washed and dried and braided each others' hair, and tried to ignore the eyes that tracked their every movement, and sometimes more.

Hel dunks her head under the water. There's a brief moment where the elven woman's dainty hands linger on her shoulders, strangely strong, holding her under, but then her hands move to Hel's hair, making sure every strand has been wetted.

She draws in a deep breath when she surfaces from the water, and looks over her shoulder to see that the other woman is blushing again. But the awkward moment passes quickly.

"I didn't ask your name," Hel says, softly, trying to force the awkward moment by.

There's a pause, as a splendid golden-brown gaze drifts down to the flagstones. And then a voice, in its musical Nevarran accent, says, "Pelagia."

"Nice to meet you, Pelagia. Thank you for this." Hel looks down at the play of runelight over water, watches fire flicker, and recalls the Circle of Ostwick. "It's been three years — more than that, by now — since I've had this."

"Don't thank me," Pelagia says, and doesn't tip a bowl of thick, soapy water over Hel's head. Instead, she leans forward, reaching around, and Hel sees only a few flashes of black, lit up by the runes, before something wraps around her throat.

Hel kicks the side of the tub and tries to draw in a breath. She gets in half of one, and then the thing around her throat begins to squeeze in earnest. It cuts into her skin, hard and sharp, and the inside of her throat burns. The outside, too; it hurts from her skin all the way down.

The rope tightens as she thrashes. Hel flings herself from side to side, flailing, and damn near overturns the tub. The lack of air starts to make her feel lightheaded, and emptiness wells up in her chest, until she thinks she'll burst or collapse if she can't get air.

It's instinct, to reach out with magic. She did it as a child, lashing out with mana to turn the canal outside her bedroom smooth as glass, and she does it again today. The bathwater freezes, the windows freeze — a harsh crackling sound, as they break from the cold — and her left hand glows like a bonfire as all the mana in the air wakes the Anchor.

She can't cast blind, but she twists in the tub — ice snaps and hisses as she moves, sweating and melting thanks to the fire runes — and reaches up. Her fingers close around Pelagia's wrist, and there is no incantation, no named spell, only how little breath she has in her. Only the black spots dancing across her vision, and the fire Pelagia has set in her throat, and fingers clasped around a strong, slender wrist, and the memory of _cold_.

Frost sears Pelagia's skin, turns it winter-pale and makes her hand shake, and within moments, Pelagia's grip on one end of the rope slackens. Hel takes that bare space of a second to draw in another breath, a full one that burns as it crawls, wretched and bruised, down her throat.

But then the rope goes tight again, tighter than before, and tears spring to her eyes, a foolish reflex that won't keep her alive.

Heloise hears the slide of metal on skin — such a quiet, unmistakable sound — and then the rope around her neck loosens, even as she hears the noise of a body collapsing to the floor. She grabs it in one hand and flings it away, then turns.

Cole looks as if some demented child had painted him all in red, or maybe as if he'd taken a bucket of red to the face. In a manner of speaking, he did. The knife in his right hand is tiny.

All Hel can think to say at that moment is, "Cole." Her voice comes out raw, wrong. It hurts to breathe, still, and worse to talk.

"I heard you," he says. "The Anchor was so bright, but I heard you anyway. Strangling, slipping, scared of the sleep. Scared to leave. You were as bright and clear as sunlight on a frozen river."

Canal, she almost says, but she thinks he knows — or sees, or hears, or however he senses memories — and simply doesn't have the vocabulary, or maybe doesn't understand what he saw. Instead, she just reaches out and takes the knife from him.

He tilts his head, but his gaze is simply assessing. After a moment, his eyes focus on her throat.

"I knew yours came off, because you wear so many different ones. That's private, though, everyone says so, even if mages don't really get privacy. I'm sorry. But it is good that I came in here, isn't it? I helped. I killed her, and I helped."

"You helped," she tells him. "It's fine. Wash the," she has to pause. It's instinct to massage at her throat, but it doesn't really help, "blood off."

"Elfroot numbs pain," Cole tells her, even as he cleans his knife off and sheaths it again. He tries to wipe blood off his face, succeeding mostly in smearing it along his hand. 

Hel bends down and picks up her dressing gown. She wraps it around herself, but pulls the belt loose and dips it in the water. She hardly even thinks about stepping forward and wiping the blood off his face. The shirt's a wash, so she turns her attention to his hands.

She's still cleaning blood off Cole's hands when her door bangs open. There's no stopping herself from startling, no keeping herself from calling the cold, just to stay safe. Cole's gaze flicks to her, but he says nothing, only gives her his other hand to wash the blood away.

But she's staring toward the door.

Vivienne is the first to come in, followed quickly by Dorian. She moves in a smooth stride, and seems to take in the details as she approaches. Like Cole, her eyes focus on Hel's neck, but she detours to the bed. She grabs one of the warmer, thicker blankets, and drapes it over Hel's shoulders once she's close enough.

"It would seem you've had a night of excitement, my dear," she says.

Dorian gazes at the body, then turns toward the tub and the sloshed water, the shards of glass and ice that litter the floor.

He turns back to Hel, and moves forward, toward her. "How badly does that hurt? I can fix it for you. It looks terrible! No, don't even try to talk. Cullen and Leliana are going to put up such a fuss."

He crosses the room to her in just a few strides. He'd thrown his Tevinter coat on over a pair of loose trousers, and his hair is sleep-mussed. A glow that blurs between blue-green and green flickers at his fingertips, and as he lifts his hand to her abused throat, she tastes mint and elfroot.

The door clatters open again, and this time, in rush Solas and Varric. She sees the exact moment Solas takes in the tableau. He nods to her and crosses to Cole. His voice is a low, soothing murmur, inquiring after the spirit's health and state of mind.

Varric looks from her to Cole and Solas to the dead body and shattered glass, then back to her. "Maker's breath, Inquisitor. You really don't get a break, do you?"

Hel draws in a breath, and it burns only a little going down. She presses her fingers to her throat, feels the raised welts and the tender skin. Dorian has healed the inside, but the damage on the outside remains. Which, if she recalls her rudimentary lessons in Creation magic, is good practice — a properly applied healing spell focuses on the root damage, and generally leaves time to deal with the evidence of the wound.

She decides she might as well continue as she's begun. "I guess I don't, Varric." Her voice is a hollowed-out rasp, low and grating, but at least it doesn't hurt as much to talk.

"This really is ridiculous. First that fellow in Halamshiral, now this. Are the Crows just sitting around in Antiva dreaming up the maddest ways to kill you? 'Why, the poisoned champagne glass failed? Then we will send a servant to assassinate Thedas's only hope in the bath! That will turn out so well!'" 

Dorian sounds downright indignant, but that's probably a good sign.

"Someone attempted to assassinate the Inquisitor in the Winter Palace?" Solas looks over at them, eyes glinting with the quicksilver intellect he turns so often to his research, and occasionally on his companions.

"A Crow poisoned my wineglass with magebane as a warning." Hel sighs, waves a hand. "It's too long to tell, just now." She has no desire whatever to go into the sordid history of her family, tenderized vocal cords or no.

Before anyone can say anything else — or before she can question how Solas hadn't heard; the news had been all over the Inner Circle within hours of her return to Skyhold — the door slams open again. Hel hears it bang against the wall.

Cullen streams into the room, carrying a greatsword rather than his sword and shield. His grip on the hilt flexes, perhaps tightening, before he apparently processes the entire room.

"She was Nevarran," Hel tells him, because this seems like a detail the commander of her forces and expert in underworld knowledge should know. "She said her name was Pelagia."

Cullen's eyes flick to the dead body, and then back to her. "Leliana's people will take care of this. If you can," and here, he taps his neck with his free hand, "tell me everything that happened."

Hel takes a ragged breath, more to test her throat than out of need of air, and does. She's halfway through the telling — it's not exactly a long story, as far as she's concerned — when Cassandra makes her way to the room. She has sword and shield both, and barely bothered to lace up her boots.

Cullen holds one hand out, aimed at Cassandra, for silence. His eyes are still on Hel — on her throat — assembling the pieces of her evening, assessing them, strategizing.

"Maker preserve us," is Cassandra's take. "Are they fools? Do they not realize what they're playing at — and who they're playing it with? How little chance they have of success, and how many lives will be lost if they do?"

"The Guild are not idiots," is all Cullen says, but thinly restrained anger turns his voice tense. He hasn't yet looked away from Heloise, or the marks Pelagia left on her neck. "They're playing some sort of game against House Trevelyan, and they're using us to do it."

* * *

Hel spends the night in the tavern, in one of the spare rooms. She hadn't the heart to wake Josephine just for a new room for a night while Leliana's agents dealt with the body, and likely carried the tale to their mistress. She had looked in on the other members of the Inner Circle, but all save Sera — who had fallen asleep in a position that would leave Hel regretting it for the next week, had she tried it — are well, and Sera is yet young and flexible.

Hel locks the door to her rented room and traces an ice glyph over the window, and then crawls onto the bed. She's too tired to even worm her way under the covers; she just lets her head hit the pillow and closes her eyes.

The Fade reaches for her, and she reaches back.

The dream takes her back to the Circle at Ostwick. Some part of her sees the Fade beneath the illusion of the Circle — through the windows, she sees the Black City on the horizon — but she mostly doesn't question or try to change it.

Instead, she walks beside Trelawney and Carrington. They're hurrying through the corridors to the Campo. They could be spirits, curious of the living, who chose to play roles in her dream theatre. They could be demons, bent on tormenting her or tempting her, stoking her rage, offering deals. They could be simply wisps of a memory.

Heloise doesn't care. Trelawney's skin is shadowy, the rich brown of the sun-baked hills where sheep graze, and her eyes are clear. Here, her voice, even at its lowest, sounds like a melodious chime. And Carrington is alive again, his green eyes darting from corner to shadow. At least for now.

"They won't let him continue like this," Trelawney mutters, just as she did that day. "Whippings? It's madness."

Carrington says, as they pass a trio of pale, hollow-eyed apprentices, "Confinement isn't any better."

Heloise had said nothing, in the memory the dream mocks. She had been thinking of the cold, dank cells beneath the Carracks, and the way some of the cells had flooded. But in the dream, she says what she should have said then, as if it would have changed anything:

"You both know we mustn't look away, or make any noise. Or argue." The Templars assembled will be watching for it. Everyone knows that. Like a hammer held above an anvil, they'll be waiting to strike.

She knows what the dream must contain for her, because she was there.

Carrington's hands dance through the air as he talks, and Heloise misses him, suddenly, a fierce pang of loss and memory that squeezes her heart.

They pass through the final set of hallways, and as they go, Templars watch them. Trelawney watches them back, and Hel can see her hands clench into fists as she gathers her skirts.

At the time, she'd pressed close to Trelawney, filled her ears with nonsense about how surely the Knight-Commander would return soon and force the Knight-Captain to release the First Enchanter from the cells. How the abrogation of the Flame School in the Primalists' College — and none of them at the timed dared call it what it was: mass murder — wouldn't happen again.

But this time she doesn't say it. Why should she offer this false Trelawney, whether she is memory or spirit, the cold comfort of an obvious lie?

The Campo is sunny. It hadn't been, on the day the dream recreates. She knows that, intellectually; she remembers the gray clouds and the overcast light, the way the youngest apprentices had shivered in the shade thrown by the Carracks' tallest tower, where it had been unseasonably cold. But she cannot help but recall the Campo the same way she recalls her family's dining room: swamped in the syrupy golden light of Ostwick's long, lazy, too warm afternoons, with the flick-and-dart patterns of the sun on the water casting bright shadows.

Ghyslain Penzance, the Knight-Captain and acting Knight-Commander of the Ostwick Circle at the Carracks, stands stop the Campo's stage, where the Chanters used to recite. He turns to face Hel, as if he'd been waiting for her arrival.

His eyes burn blue, and the light catches strands of red and gold in his auburn hair. Even as he tilts his head back and draws in a deep breath to speak over the assembled mages and Templars, one hand sweeps to indicate the whipping block. The other hand is on his sword.

Heloise knows what's coming.

She forces herself to wake up. She startles herself as she wakes, thrashing by reflex, and when she manages to force her eyes open, she sees the weak, watery gray of the sky just before dawn. It filters in, second-hand, through her windows, and leaves her just barely able to make out Cole sitting in a chair in the corner.

Cole's eyes are open, and look as feverish as usual. 

The first words out of Hel's mouth are, "Were you watching me sleep?" Her voice is less ragged than it was last night, but it's still raw and sore-sounding, croaky and half smothered beneath the irritation Dorian didn't get rid of.

"No," Cole says. "I wanted to be here in case you needed me."

Which is just Cole all over. Hel sighs and shoves the blanket he'd brought her away. It slides down along her legs, into the light, and she realizes that it isn't a blanket. It's a deep red, shot with gold, and there's a fur collar —

Cullen's coat. Had Cullen been in here —?

"I got that for you," Cole tells her. He doesn't even sound proud, just matter-of-fact.

Hel smiles for him. "Thank you, Cole." She pauses, trying to to sort the wheat from the chaff and figure out what has to be done first. "Right. Wash the night off, break my fast, return Cullen's coat, call a war council."

And then she'll probably need to check in with the rest of the Inner Circle. Maker's breath. Her family really can ruin anything.

Cole sounds both certain and vaguely confused, as if he's trying to correct her about the color of the sky or something equally obvious, when he says, "But nights don't wash off. They just become mornings, and you walk away from them until they're smaller than you are."

Hel is almost lucky she's already distressed about having almost been murdered in her own home, by someone in the employ of the Inquisition. Because if that hadn't been occupying most of her worry, she'd probably be more than a little concerned that one of Cole's more cryptic statements sounded so sensible.

"I suppose they don't, but I'll give it a try." 

Cole nods, and rises from the chair. "I'll go, now."

"Thank you for your help last night, Cole. I'll see you later."

"I hope so," he says, and when she looks back his way, he's gone.

Hel sighs. Before she can even think of trying to gather sufficient clothing for a walk to the bathing room and a quick scrub, someone knocks briskly at the door and then swings it open.

"I locked that last night," Hel says. "I know I did. I remember it very clearly."

Leliana's plump, shapely lips curl into an enigmatic smile. The hood leaves her eyes half in shadow, especially in this light. But Hel watches her gaze flick to the bed.

Where Cullen's coat is.

Leliana arches a brow as she looks back to Hel. "I see you were perfectly safe in the remainder of the night." Before Hel can sputter out a response to that, the Spymaster adds, "I should have expected him to handle the matter personally."

Her smile is puckish. This is only a joke, not the beginning of the exact rumor the Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, cannot afford to have spread. Thank the Maker for that.

"Cole brought it to me," Hel says. She almost admits that Cole thought she needed it, but that would just throw fuel on the sparkings of thoughts she doesn't want in Leliana's head.

Leliana nods, and then settles herself into the chair Cole had just left. She seems more solid than Cole, even without the hat. But then her eyes glint, like holding seaglass up to the sun, and the woman vanishes beneath the Left Hand.

"The assassin Cole killed last night was working for the Crows," she says without preamble. "I only have one reliable contact from the Guild, and he is… unavailable, for now. But she had orders from the Guild in her personal effects."

"She was Nevarran," Hel says, blankly uncomprehending. How could a Nevarran be an Antivan Crow? For that matter… "And she was one of us. Wasn't she?"

"She was," Leliana allows. "She was in our — well, best to save all this for the war council. You _had_ planned to call one?"

Hel smiles. "I thought I'd try scrubbing myself awake and eating, first."

"A fair plan. I'll leave you to implement it." Leliana stands, and after a moment where her white skin reminds Hel of porcelain, she is only herself again, not the Inquisition's Spymaster and Left Hand of the Divine.

* * *

She finds Cullen in his office. He's in his armor already, standing alone and staring at several different reports on his desk. He looks no worse for having been awake as long or longer than she was, but given how drawn his face looks, the tension of his jaw, he might look better if he had a few shorter nights.

He looks up from his desk when the door swings closed behind her. She can tell the instant he realizes she has his coat. He doesn't say anything of the matter, though, only straightens and looks to her.

"Inquisitor," he says, and his voice is careful. His eyes land on her throat, and she could swear she sees the barest trace of a wince. 

She can't exactly blame him; she saw herself in the mirror this morning. There's a lurid purple-and-green bruise as wide as her hand, ringing all the way around her neck. It's uneven, too, worse in some spots than others. Parts of it swelled overnight into a thick, upraised welt, which made brushing her hair something of a trial. All in all, she still looks like someone tried to strangle her with a very rough rope, and very nearly succeeded.

Still, he soldiers on. "You are well, I hope?"

"As well as can be expected," she says.

Cullen nods. Something draws his gaze back to her neck, and though the clench of one of his hands into a fist is subtle, she can't miss it. He draws no further attention to whatever he's feeling, however. Instead, he says, "Has Leliana found anything?"

"She has. She didn't give me a full briefing. We'll probably all hear it at the war council." Hel crooks her mouth into most of a smile. "We might even get something done about something actually important, like the Wardens in the Western Approach."

Cullen's mouth curves downward as his eyes narrow. He considers her for a moment, but evidently decides to let whatever has set him off pass, because he says only, "An early start for the War Room might be best, then. I should update you on troop movements and discuss the allocation of any Orlesian troops sent our way."

A classic response, she supposes. When in doubt, work. Well, it's been her approach, too, so she can hardly fault him for it.

"I like that plan. As the poets say, lay on, Commander."

He looks faintly startled, even as she tilts her head to indicate the door, but he comes out from behind the desk.

He bows his head a bit, clearly looking to the coat in her hands, and says, "May I…?"

"Cole brought this to me," she says. "He must have noticed you giving it to me on the ride back from Halamshiral, and…" Honestly, there's no telling what goes on in Cole's mind, sometimes. His logic is ineffable on his best days, and Hel isn't sure she wants to look too deeply into the implications, here.

Cullen seems to share her reluctance, because he only nods. She relaxes a fraction at the way he moves on, then offers him the coat.

Their fingers don't touch when he takes it.

* * *

They beat everyone to the War Room. Cullen takes his usual place on the opposite side of the table, while Hel examines the map. Josephine and Leliana arrive together, and within a few moments, Hawke and Stroud have entered the room.

Hawke has the kind of face that should, Hel thinks, be youthful. But hard living and the sun make her look a good six years older than she is. The freckles that dust her cheeks and nose are parts of a beaten complexion, not signs of youth, and her gray eyes are sunken and more serious than Hel would expect of the Champion that Varric has always described.

Both Hawke and Stroud spare moments to size up the room. Hel can't even be irritated that they've wasted time; it's her first instinct, too, though she suppresses it with her advisors. Hawke's gaze lingers for a beat longer on Leliana than it does on anyone else, but then she relaxes.

"Leliana," Hawke says, with the kind of good humor that makes Hel think of rounded cheeks and half-mouthed smiles, "Cullen. Good to see the two of you again."

Cullen nods. "And you. To business?" He nods toward the map.

"To business," Stroud agrees. He shoots a look at Hawke.

Leliana, on the other hand, looks to Cullen. Hel sees her eyes flick down to Cullen's coat, then flick straight back to Hel. Her face never changes its mild expression, but Hel can see her noting the detail. Still, there are other matters at hand.

"They're holed up in Adamant," Hawke says. "We tailed them there, and kept watch up for more than a week. Wardens go in, but Wardens don't come out. It's like Old Barlin's raccoon traps."

"They are massing their forces for quite an offensive. It may be they intend to assault the Deep Roads soon," Stroud agrees.

"What they _intend_ hardly matters; their mages will do Corpyheus's bidding." Cullen shifts where he stands, and Hel watches Hawke's eyes snap to him.

"Those fiendish, untrustworthy mages," Hawke says, agreeably, but Hel hears a cutting edge under her tone, and wonders what history lies between the pair of them. Then again, Hawke likely needs no more reason than Cullen's position in the Kirkwall Templars.

Cullen doesn't rise to the bait, if that was what the remark was. Instead, he frowns at the map. "Did you make any record of their numbers?"

Leliana uncrosses her arms, looking from Hawke to Cullen and back. Both ignore this.

"Of the demons? No; that would have meant going into the fortress, and I left my engraved invitation to all the places I shouldn't be back in Kirkwall." At Cullen's look, Hawke looks to Stroud. "I counted four groups in the span of a week, but I'm not clear on how many were in each group. You know how Wardens travel?"

Stroud's moustache quivers as he breathes out, considering. "It depends on their commanding officers and their postings." He pauses for only a beat or so before he goes on: "Warden-Commander Clarel moves her troops in squadrons of twenty to thirty. Warden-Commander Surana trains her people to move in small strike teams, usually no more than four or five. Not counting the dogs."

"A habit she formed during the Blight." Leliana's eyes are on Stroud, now, and Josie is looking to Leliana with faint surprise etched along her face. If she had to guess, Hel would say that Leliana doesn't talk much about the Blight.

Cullen doesn't, either.

Hel doesn't suppose she blames either of them for that.

So instead, she asks: "Any guesses how many were in a group?"

Stroud thinks back. "On average, the groups we saw had perhaps fifteen members."

"Right, but back to the numbers, you saw at least, what, sixty people in a week?"

"Try closer to eighty," Hawke says. "Don't you have spies and scouts for this? My job was just to follow them, not tell you how many Grey Wardens were going to try to kill you."

"They're thinning their numbers, don't forget," Cullen says, and Josie doesn't flinch, exactly, but it's a near thing.

Josie looks down to her writing board and then back up, likely as a reflex, as she asks, "You refer to the sacrifices?"

"Yes," Cullen says. "We'll never have more than a rough count."

"A rough count would be more than we have now," Leliana tells the room. "Inquisitor, I suggest you let my people gather intelligence before we move any further with this."

"It's not a bad suggestion; going in blind certainly does no good. I know I've heard of maps or blueprints of Adamant. I can suggest to some contacts that they bring those to us." Cullen crosses his arms and looks down at the map.

"I cannot sway any of our allies to support us further without more information," Josie agrees.

"Then it's settled," Heloise says, in the voice of a woman more confident than she is. "Leliana, put your people on it. I want a decent approximate count. Cullen, get whatever information your contacts can. We'll reconvene as soon as someone has anything. Hawke, Warden Stroud, you're both welcome to stay here in the meantime." Hel stops, then turns to Josephine. "I'm assuming you made the arrangements last night?"

 

Josie smiles. "I did, Inquisitor. It was before the," she pauses, and Hel sees her gaze dip for just a moment before returning, resolutely, to Hel's face, "the excitement."

At that, both Hawke and Stroud look to Hel. That they noticed the mottled bruising immediately, Hel doesn't doubt, but now Josie's returned their attention to it.

"Excitement," Hel says. "Good, that's taken care of. Anything else on the agenda?" If she's lucky, she can get at least Hawke and Stroud out of the War Room before Leliana pounces.

"Actually, we should discuss that," Leliana says. "Last night, I mean." Her gaze flicks back to Hawke, and she curves her plump lips into a warm smile that is, nonetheless, a little terrifying.

Hawke's eyes narrow for a moment. Her features are more delicate, more angular, than Hel thought most Fereldans looked. Rather than solid and round, like Cullen and Threnn, Hawke looks clever, if tired.

Leliana doesn't even have to open her mouth. Hawke simply nods and says, "I assume this is business the Inquisition doesn't want known outside the Inquisitor's cabal?"

"Actually," Josephine says, and draws the word out for a moment, "we may be forced to make this public. I do understand why you wish to avoid it, and I pray it is possible, but…"

Heloise doesn't even skip a beat, doesn't over-enunciate, doesn't firm up her tone into command. She says, very simply, "No." She knows it's unreasonable, and yet she cannot consider the possibility. Not without exhausting her other options.

It's at this moment that Hawke evidently realizes that none of this concerns her, and decides she isn't curious. She stretches where she stands, and says, "I know where I'm not wanted. Come on, let's go find our rooms." Hawke tilts her head, then adds, "Or something to shoot lightning at. I never get tired of making Templars nervous."

Cullen gives Hawke a bland look at that, though Hel notes that his hand isn't far from the pommel of his sword. Hawke's response, as she leaves, is the mercurial, sardonic smile that Varric once spent most of a paragraph trying to describe. 

He almost did it justice.

The door swings shut behind Hawke and Stroud. There is silence in the War Room, tense and taut. Hel strains her ears to listen to the hallway and the receding footsteps.

When she no longer hears them, she says, "Let's have it, Leliana. Was this the work of the Crows?"

"It was." Leliana doesn't bother with preamble, doesn't try to soften it. "Pelagia of Nevarra was hired perhaps a week before our party left for Halamshiral. Those who saw her recall her as disgruntled but willing to work, likely someone who had wished to serve the Inquisition in a different position. She seemed as zealous as any other pilgrim." A pause, and Leliana's mouth crooks up into that playful, beautiful, terrifying smile again.

"How much of Pelagia was a lie?" Hel asks.

"All of her, save perhaps the name. We found a guild contract in her belongings, a signed confession, and correspondence with one Solange Trevelyan, in which she agreed that you are an outrage." A look as cool and blue as magically crafted ice, considering, and then Leliana says, "The eldest child of Lyonesse Trevelyan, and her heir."

"My eldest sister," Hel agrees. She waits a moment, staring down at the map. Her gaze, inevitably, travels to Ostwick: city of canals, though of course the city is only a star on the paper. "I won't have my family ruined. These are the actions of two or three people among more than a dozen."

"Ruining your family does not help the Inquisition, no," Josephine agrees. "Leliana, would it be possible to go directly to the Guild? I do have some leverage in Antiva City."

Leliana's gaze dips to the map. Rather than chew her lip, or shutter her eyes, Leliana goes motionless as she considers. She is a point of stillness unmatched in the rest of the room. 

"I only have one direct contact with any influence in the Crows, and he is unavailable," Leliana says, at length. "I do have the name of Pelagia's Guildmaster, but I doubt he would react as we intend."

Josephine nods. "It is said the Crows who do not complete their missions are killed. I thought such a group might… be difficult to reason with. Still, they are businessmen. It may be possible to buy out the contract."

"That would be expensive," Cullen says. His tone is sour. "And the Inquisition has enough expenses as it is. We may have to go through the Trevelyans for this, as they started this mess in the first place." This time, he doesn't look at Hel.

Leliana looks up, and her eyes have an unsettling glint. She's calculating something. "Do you have any leverage on your sister?"

"In noble families, there's always something we don't want the head of the house to know," Josephine agrees. A pause, and then she adds, "Speaking as the eldest child."

Heloise doubts Josephine has any regrets quite like Solange's. She remembers the lower cells, where the foul, diseased water rose inexorably with the tides, and there was no way to escape it. The way knights had stared at her as she passed, hungry for favor and hating the money changing hands, mocking the honor of their order, turning slowly to her sister's ideas. The years and years of knife-edged remarks delivered from behind a smile.

And there's no forgetting the blue sheen on the branding iron or the carved wooden gag. No forgetting the thick leather straps or the way the door had slammed shut.

The Knight-Commander had stopped that one.

"I know a few things," Hel says, hedging. Solange might not want their mother to know, but much of the vitriol they've passed between them, over the years, she considers intensely private. And who wants to know that the Inquisitor, the only person who can stand against Corypheus, was tormented by her own kin?

"It might be time for you to write a few letters," Josephine tells her. "On very official stationery."

"To your parents, as well as your sister," Leliana says.

Cullen looks blandly at them all, then at the map. He rests his palm on the pommel of his sword, but says only, "It's settled, then. Shall we adjourn?" A pause and a smile turned crooked by the scar on his lip, and he adds, "Given her sympathies, Hawke may well be using lightning spells to amuse herself."

Hel chuckles. "Perish the thought. Yes, I'd say we've done all we can, for now."

"Be grateful you were never wakened by a pair of shapeshifters dueling," Leliana replies, but her mouth is curved as she maneuvers around the table and heads for the door. She holds it open.

* * *

Heloise drafts the letter on foolscap, of course. It begins:

_To my esteemed and beloved Parents,_

_I pray no Word of my Demise has yet reached your Ears when you receive This. If One such has, I apologize for any Pain it may have caused you. Please allow me to assure you that any Rumor of my Death, Illness, or grievous Injury is greatly exaggerated._

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for this gorgeous art to [Rabid Tanuki](http://rabidtanuki.tumblr.com) for the "returning Cullen's cloak" scene! It's also available over [here](http://rabidtanuki.tumblr.com/post/130954585321/their-fingers-dont-touch-when-he-takes-it-cullen).


	3. Chapter 3

The apologetic letter from the Guild, on parchment with a distinct floral scent — one that matches its elaborate language — arrives three days before she and the cavalry are set to leave for Adamant. Hawke, Stroud, the sappers, and most of the infantry have already left, while Hel and Leliana have been assembling the remains of the Inner Circle into strike teams. They'll act as a supplement to infantry and cavalry.

Heloise reads the letter aloud in the War Room, before Leliana, Josephine, and Cassandra, and then tosses it onto the War Table in front of her, annoyed.

"They must be mad," is Cassandra's pronouncement. "Mad or lying. Leliana, can you not recall any agent from any assignment?"

Leliana looks down at the War Table, then tilts her head, considering. Her tone is thoughtful as she says, "I can, but my information networks are superior to theirs outside Antiva." A pause, and she adds, "Almost any agent, from almost any mission. I do have limits."

Hel looks for something to say. Something confident, with the same wry humor she's been using to hide her uncertainties from the start.

She comes up with: "Well, at least there won't be any _new_ assassins. Probably. Josephine, do you mind reading that over? Maybe cover your nose while you do."

She reaches out, picks up the letter again, and passes it over to Josephine. Josephine reaches out for it. 

"The parchment is certainly," a delicate pause, and then Josephine says, "fragrant. As is the wording." She smiles at Hel.

"Thank you," Hel says, and smiles back. "Leliana, Cassandra, is there anything else we need to go over?"

"At the moment, I think not." Cassandra looks to the War Table, as well. She shifts, as if uncomfortable being here with nothing that needs their attention. 

This particular version of the War Room isn't really her space anymore, welcome as she'd always been in Haven, and much as Hel welcomes her opinions. She seems particularly aware of it, with the way her gaze drops to the map, clearly drinking in the placement of new markers, on missions she hadn't been informed of or consulted about.

Hel nods. "Then what say we adjourn?"

* * *

Adamant is a nightmare, both literally and figuratively. 

Heloise can't quash the sense of pride as the Inquisition's infantry charges forward, after their borrowed sappers have split the walls with their trebuchets. But she knows they'll pay a heavy price for that forward momentum. Still, for the space of those first few steps, it's inspiring.

The less said about everything after, the better. Even later, she struggles to put it into a report. Struggles even to think about it. Erimond. Clarel. That damnable dragon, may the Maker himself cast its vile soul — if it has one — into the Void.

And her fragile, foolish flesh has walked the Fade —

Divine Justinia, or a thing very like her. A thing that might have wished it was her, if in fact it wasn't.

She wishes she could be stunned that her whole life for the past year and more has been the result of a mad accident. Truth be told, it's not much worse than Hel had expected. Some part of her had wanted to believe, if only in the hope that being called the Herald of Andraste wasn't some blend of hubris and blasphemy. But Hel knows herself, and has known from the beginning that she felt no divine breath on the back of her neck.

Neither the Maker nor Andraste helped her aim the trebuchets in Haven. It wasn't the Maker's boot that launched that fateful swing of weight and counterweight, and sent her tumbling into the mines. And the Maker certainly didn't see fit to break her fall before she landed on a snow-covered wooden platform, nor stilled the storm she'd had to wade through.

But it would have been nice, to believe.

She mentions this feeling to no one. She never says that she can't even call herself lucky to be alive, because it was Warden Stroud who bought her passage from the Fade. And, as the Herald of Andraste — who is not a mortal woman — she must never say or even imply that the Maker didn't guide Warden Stroud's sword in the fight against the Nightmare.

She dreams of the Fade all throughout the fortnight ride back to Val Royeaux. Hel finds it beyond odd to dream about dreaming, for she suspects she is not walking the actual Fade. Maybe she is. The Black City looms on every horizon, and who's to say what's real when it comes to dreams?

* * *

Those of the Inner Circle who travel with her stop in Val Royeaux — most of the Infantry has split along the way, regiments returning to their original postings, with Cullen and Ser Rylen having long ridden ahead to oversee their dispersal — and Leliana secures them lodgings.

The inn is modest, but even a modest inn is a luxury, compared to sleeping in tents off the side of the Imperial Highway. Heloise pauses in the door to her rented room. She can't help but watch the light slant in through the windows, setting the rich red coverlets and upholstered chair ablaze. The sun seems weaker, in Ferelden and Orlais, frailer, but the limestone walls and cobbles drench the room in gold almost as bright as Ostwick's long, syrupy afternoons.

She shucks her armor, glad to be rid of the long, heavy duster, the ringmail, and the hardened leather cuirass and greaves. She saves her gauntlets for last, but there's no avoiding their removal. Her fingers look bronzy in the light from the window, but her left hand glints green.

She looks at it, and thinks of falling, of an alien sky. "This looks nothing like the Maker's bosom," Hawke had said, with her mouth curled into her madcap, dizzying smile. It had been a joke, some reflex to brush aside the fear like she'd wick away sweat, but looking back, Hel feels, acutely, the Maker's absence.

If there ever was a Maker, He cares nothing for them now.

Hel turns her gaze away from the Anchor. She crosses the room, keeping her eyes up to avoid catching sight of the green glow, and collapses onto the bed. She doesn't even bother pulling off her shirt or trousers, or unwrapping the bindings she uses when she'll have to wear armor.

She dreams of a ten year old boy's terrified face. The shine of sunlight on sharp steel. Red. And on the Campo's stage, hair alight in the afternoon like living flame, Ser Ghyslain Penzance, his gauntlets tight around the sword's hilt.

In the dream, Knight-Captain Ghyslain looks at her, and his hands flex on the supple leather he's wrapped around the grip.

In the dream, the boy's head lands at her feet, rather than only rolling a step or so past the Campo's stage as it would in her memory. She looks down at it, at the wide eyes and pale lips, and then looks away.

* * *

Leliana is merciful at dinner that night. Hel knows she should write her report on exactly what happened while it's all still fresh, and yet she's sure she won't forget a moment. Still, Leliana never mentions it. Never even alludes to Adamant, as if she can sense how deeply Hel doesn't want to talk or even think about it.

Instead, the Inner Circle gathers in the inn's dining room. Aside from Cole — who sits with them, though he fidgets restlessly, always looking away and around — they all sit down to a dinner that consists of capons roasted in a lemon-and-herb marinade. A basket of roasted vegetables and another basket of fresh-baked bread sit fragrant on the table. Servants in face paint flit about, pouring white wine into glasses.

The capons are buttery and crisp and perfect, and between her companions and Leliana's generosity of mood, dinner is smooth and pleasant.

And yet something lingers sour, like the scum on the surface of the bright water in the canals. Hel can't escape the feeling that something is wrong. The eyes of the servants in their painted faces glint and flicker and dart, even as their mouths and brows stay in cool, professional lines. There are moments she could swear they linger unnecessarily, or watch a second too long.

Is she being paranoid? Is this simple bedazzlement with the Herald of Andraste and the spectacle of her company? Or is there a danger here?

She has almost dismissed the fears when one of the chefs brings out the dessert course, an iced pudding of sugared ricegrain and Antivan limes, covered in waves of frothy meringue. The chef gives the table a cheeky smile, and then extends a hand.

The back of Hel's tongue starts to itch, and she feels the hair on her neck stand up. Goose pimples dot her arms, and the sense of unease around another person's magic redoubles her sense of danger.

Not the chef — her concentration is on the merengue. Somewhere else, then: one of the servants. Hel tenses, calling her own mana, and when she hears the soft press of a hand against leather and the rustle of cloth, she stands abruptly. Her chair clatters to the floor, but Hel is already whirling, frost decorating her hands and her fingertips wreathed in sparkling white steam —

Iron Bull has plucked a knife from his belt, and even as Hel calls on Winter's Grasp, he's reaching out for a servant with a crossbow. One of Bull's hands holds the crossbow by its base, tilting it until it's aiming at the ceiling.

The servant fires, but hits nothing, and Hel casts Winter's Grasp at the same time Bull's other hand plants the knife in his eye. It's all a swift, confusing span of seconds, as the servant's face bleeds while the rest of him freezes.

And then, that simply, it's over.

She does a quick headcount and realizes that Sera and Leliana have gone missing, while Varric holds a boot knife, and Cole is kneeling beside the chef, who has hidden herself under the table in the moments Hel wasn't looking at her.

Hel turns around and rights her chair, and ignores the nauseated quiver in her stomach. She runs her hands along the soft, smooth grains of the wood and counts her breaths until her hands stop shaking.

She's the Inquisitor, and she's faced down a dragon and the Nightmare with seeming unflappable good humor. She must approach this with no less grace.

"I must commend Val Royeaux's hospitality," she says, and curves her mouth into a warm, amused smile. "Nothing like an assassination to make me feel at home." She kneels and offers the chef her right hand.

The tiny woman takes it, and her eyes are wide and dark, fingers shaking.

* * *

Hours later, it's Leliana who appears in her room. Heloise would have expected her to be bloody, or have mussed armor, but her spymaster is clean. Not a link of mail out of place, nor even a scuff on her leather gloves. Was her search bloodless, or is she simply trying to spare Hel's nerves?

There's no telling, though she leans toward 'bloodless.'

Leliana closes the door before she says anything. She pauses long enough to slide the bolt home — it goes with a sharp metal-on-wood sound, and Hel twitches — and then moves forward, into the room. Her movements are quick and silent and sure as a cat's.

"A Crow," Leliana says. "I suspect one of the last of their attempts, but I've sent Sera ahead to be sure." Leliana waits a moment, blue eyes aglitter. "She is quite good at rooting out double agents."

"You want her for your ranks, don't you?" Hel can't help asking. She sits heavily on her simple bed, tugging at the laces of her boots. 

She'd been more used to sandals, in her part of the Free Marches, and back in Haven she'd worn the big, rugged boots Fereldans are known for. They'd kept the snow out and the mud off, and been roomy in the bargain; she feels strange to wear something so tightly moulded to her feet and legs.

Leliana's mouth quirks. "I do." Another silent moment. Leliana's eyes rove along the room as she considers, and her mouth quirks wider. "And I don't. I'm glad you count her a friend, at least."

"You really think this was the last of it?"

"A servant with a crossbow? A last-ditch effort." Leliana shrugs. "I may be wrong, but I do not believe so."

Hel drops the boots on the floor. "Thank you, Leliana. And I'll have to think of a way to thank Sera. We all deserved a rest, after Adamant." Perhaps she'll see if she can get iced cream and beer. She'd heard Sera discuss the idea with Iron Bull.

At the very least, having iced cream in a hard perry cider could be quite delicious.

"This is almost over," Leliana assures her. But Hel can see in her eyes that she's calculating something, mulling over in her mind the actions and reactions. Like Cullen and his chess games, she's staring intently into past and tracing lines into the future.

And Hel is almost certain that she knows what Leliana sees: the assassinations are over. But though Ostwick doesn't play the Grand Game, no heir to a noble house likes being outplayed. Solange Trevelyan will find some other way to express her displeasure.

Well, at least it will be less lethal.

* * *

The rest of the trip back to Skyhold passes quickly. And Heloise is glad to be back there. The mountain fastness has become her home, with its view of the world's teeth, ready to bite into the sky. With its warmth amidst the snow-capped peaks and its stolen bricks and its mysteries.

She's happy until Josephine smiles and greets her with a sealed letter in her hand.

Hel recognizes the imprint in the wax: stallion and sea. _Modest in temper, bold in deed._ Biddable as the horse, and unrelenting as the ocean that has claimed and re-claimed their city.

* * *

The signature at the bottom of the letter reads: _Your loving Mother_. Heloise's eyes skip over the contents, barely noticing her mother's flowing, elegant penmanship, and trace those three final words over and over again. The head of a bulrush and pressed cinquefoil blossoms fall to the floor, and she has to sigh. Worse yet, at the very bottom of the page, her mother has sketched, in dark ink, the canals outside the family townhouse. It's all dark curling lines and blank spaces, the sea more implied than shown, but gets Mother's point across.

It's not quite an official letter from House Trevelyan, informing their wayward scion of some new fiat. Still and so, it regards enough house business that her mother has decided to remind her of their relative positions. Namely: Heloise is the half-lost younger daughter with the _unfortunate_ talent and unattractive laugh, and Lyonesse Trevelyan is the matriarch whose word is law in seven-fiftieths of an entire city-state.

The first few lines are innocuous enough. _My darling and willful Daughter,_ her mother has written. _No such Word had reached our Ears, and I am grateful for It. Solange was disconsolate to learn of your Troubles; I had to reassure her more than once that, amidst the Inquisition, there must surely be Someone to help you bear such a Burden._

Which is either a dig at Heloise's stubborn refusal to consider marriage — after all, what sort of man would have married a mage? — or expressing that while Solange pretends innocence, Mother suspects her, and has made some sort of point about Heloise not being entirely friendless. Considering Mother, it could easily be both.

The letter continues on apace, and Hel almost manages to forget that Jospehine is standing not three strides away. She looks up, briefly, and offers a smile before diving back in.

Her mother's missive takes a swift, sharp turn for the unacceptable. Heloise reads the lines, then reads them again. And then, just in the very unlikely case that she is somehow misinterpreting, she reads them aloud.

"I do not see how This has escaped your Ambassador's Attention, but your Status as Inquisitor and Herald of Andraste has made you quite the eligible Belle! Many Gentlemen of good Family have visited the Estate and All wish to be remembered to you. I have found a Match whom I think will suit; you may recall him from your Days in the Circle."

She looks up, over the letter, to meet Josephine's horrified eyes. There's a faint cast of indignation in the way Josie's smile has slipped away, but her eyes are stretched wide. Josie brings a hand up to her mouth, and can't even seem to find words.

And then, Heloise reads the final remarks before her mother returns to frivolous, benevolent chatter: "He is the former Knight-Captain, Ser Ghyslain Penzance, who beheld you so dearly during your Time thence." Heloise has to stop and catch her breath at the _insanity_ of what she just read. Beheld her dearly? How has Ser Ghyslain fooled her mother? 

Matters do not improve as she continues reading, still aloud. "But you need not take Fright, my darling, willful Girl, for I have told him that he must pay Court to you in Person. You may surely expect him within a Month from receiving this Letter, for he seemed quite earnest in his Questions of your Doings, and even spoke of Amaranthine!"


	4. Chapter 4

Sunlight slants into Josephine's study through the windowpanes, casting the world in a haze of white. When Heloise draws in a breath, she smells cinquefoil and seawater. The metallic tang of _cold_ from mountain winds. Candle wax, and some warm, scented oil that Josephine uses to make her space more inviting. It's not perfect — it could only be perfect if she'd never received this letter — but it's good enough to banish the bright shadow of Ostwick.

Hel hands the letter over to Josie. "I need this not to happen," she says, and marvels for a moment at how thin her voice sounds. It doesn't quaver, exactly, but even in her own ears, where it should be resonant, it sounds high and sharp. "We _all_ need this not to happen. We need to focus on Corypheus, and whatever he's doing sacking elven ruins."

Josephine looks at her for a moment, her dark eyes grave. And then she says, almost briskly, "I agree. The game has its place, but this is a distraction." A pause, and Josie looks genuinely apologetic. She sets the letter on her desk, and for a single wild moment, Hel considers using the one Flame spell she knows to light the whole thing ablaze.

That urge only grows stronger when Josephine seats herself behind her desk, picks up her pen, and says, very softly, "I do think we can use this news to our advantage. Host him, throw a fete, focus on the real work while using his name and interest to bolster our own reputation, and then send him home without any betrothals agreed to."

Hel doesn't light the desk on fire. For one, that would be entirely too much destructive magic too close to someone she rather likes. For another, it'd set the work of the Inquisition's chief diplomat back by longer than they can afford.

Instead, she looks away for a moment. Turns her head to face the window and the sunlight that slants through it. Watches the sparkle of sun and snow, and inclines her head to take in the stark angle of the mountains near Skyhold's own peak.

When she looks back to Josephine, she asks, "Are you sure? The Knight-Captain and I have —" Hel has to search for a tactful word, and eventually settles on, "A history. We have a history."

"All the better to make you seem a true egalitarian, interested only in justice and order for all," Josephine says. She waits, and her serious dark eyes turn measuring when she adds, "Inquisitor, if you truly cannot bear the thought, I will find a way to send him right back to Ostwick. Or perhaps I will persuade him to lend his efforts in the Western Approach. But if you can bear this at all, letting a templar court you would do wonders for the Inquisition's reputation."

Her words all come as carefully phrased, as thoughtfully placed, as a cat's silent steps. Heloise is almost impressed.

Worse, Hel is almost convinced. Persuaded, rather.

And, so long as nobody in the Inquisition pushes her to _actually_ marry the man, she can abide. Probably. Maker knows she lived in the same Circle he did for years without icing up all the windows and cracking them to shards. There's plenty of work to be done; she should certainly be able to avoid him. And if she sees him but rarely, she might not even have to remember — 

"Very well," she finally says. Those words are hard, but it's surprisingly easy to find the good-humored confidence with which she's been setting everyone at ease since Haven. She quirks her mouth into a smile, and says, "But I really do expect my marble bath for this."

"I have heard rumors of a hot spring on one of the neighboring slopes," Josephine says. Her eyes glint with good humor.

Hel returns the serve. "You'd make the Inquisitor slog fifteen miles down snow-covered roads just for a decent bath? No. I want a marble tub in my bathroom. And a hypocaust to heat the water."

"I'll see what I can do," Josie says, in the same wry tone as she did when they first came to Skyhold, and with no more intention of fulfilling Hel's ridiculous demand.

* * *

Perhaps she shouldn't be surprised that when she finally falls asleep that night, she dreams of the Primalists' Solar. The top room in the Carracks' seaward tower, filled full with light from walls of lead-paned glass windows. She dreams of the sunlight catching on the bronze braziers and candelabra — the ones that would have been lit by the practicing students — and on the brass water-mirrors filled with seawater for freezing practice.

But the Fade is not kind enough to let her dream it as it used to be. No, she dreams its final day: a dozen apprentices at candles and coals, a dozen at the sea mirrors. A smattering of Senior Enchanters circling through, supervising or instructing.

She looks down, and though she knows it shouldn't be possible to read in dreams, she can understand the nonsense words she had chalked onto the slate in her hands. If this were her memory, they would be alchemical symbols for seawater and lightning discharges, and shorthanded theories on how lightning-charged mana could affect the potential drop in temperature.

That's when the heavy, faintly metallic thudding of greave-encased boots hitting the stone steps below them begins to ring. Hel wants to close her eyes, but she didn't in the memory the dream mocks, and she doesn't now. Instead, she sets her slate on a table and goes to calm one of the students by the door. 

The poor girl's eyes are stretched wide and frightened, and though she has tried to shape her ice into the smooth whorls of the more advanced apprentices, it is instead a sharp amalgam of agonized edges.

The sound of that many templar boots, both of them know, can mean nothing good. But Hel places her hands over the apprentice's.

"I know you can do better than this," Hel says, a pale mimic of Senior Enchanter Lydia, "so warm your hands a little and try again."

Ser Daveth wears a faintly puzzled look as he opens the door. The company of templars enters, with Ser Ghyslain in the lead. He's bareheaded, as always, and the light from the windows glints silver off his polished armor. He almost glows, as if lit from within.

But then he reaches into his belt and withdraws a letter. All eyes turn to him, and the fires in the braziers die. It must seem ill-advised to perform magic now.

"By consent of the Grand Cleric Bedelia of Ostwick, and wth the assistance of the templars of the Ostwick Grand Cathedral, I declare the Abrogation of the Flame School here at Ostwick. Such magic is now outlawed, and its practitioners and students, the Grand Cleric brands maleficarum."

His voice is steady and calm, perhaps a touch thinner than usual, not some thundering declamation. The space of the Solar swallows his words, rather than letting them echo off the metal and glass. Hel looks up at him, and his gaze is fixed on the paper. She sees him look up, and as his gaze falls on one of the candelabras, his mouth twists. But he tucks the letter back into a pouch on his belt. He keeps his hands out, away from his sword, as he steps forward.

Placating. He even pushes the air down in a classic calming reflex she wouldn't expect from a templar. Despite this, there's a grimness to his features that says he knows there is no hope of persuading a group of more than a dozen mages to walk quietly toward their execution.

One of the Senior Enchanters backs away, placing himself between the knot of templars and his students. Another reaches out, creating a wall of fire around herself and the children with her. But even as the senior enchanters of the Flame School prepare to fight or flee, mages of the Frost School try to get out of the way, seeking the walls or the mirrors.

Ser Ghyslain draws his sword, and one of the templars behind him makes a gesture. The crackle of flames falls silent, and the templars move forward.

The result is panic. Hel shoves the apprentice toward the windows, trying to shout — as she did then — for the girl to stay down, even as other mages try to organize some kind of defense against well-armed men who can disrupt their spells. But one of the apprentices wrenches a window open, and Hel can only watch as the girl who could not make frozen waves overbalances and tumbles out.

She must believe that the apprentice overbalanced. Surely it was some tragic accident, and not some desperate measure to escape in the only way she saw. And perhaps that tragic fall was better than what might have awaited her, amidst the confusion and the roar of flame.

* * *

When Hel wakes, she spends a full quarter of an hour bathing her eyes and cheeks in cold water. She has to dip her hand into her wash basin, but the spell takes so little other effort that the Anchor doesn't even glow.

* * *

Morrigan, naturally, has her own theories on just what Corypheus is up to. The problem is, as correct as she may be, they have no idea where specifically Corypheus is going, only what he's looking for.

"I can send my spies to search the southern wilds," Leliana says one bright afternoon. Spring comes slowly to the mountains, but the icicles hanging from the top of the rotunda are all adrip. "But I don't have much reach in Antiva, and even less in Tevinter."

Heloise watches the ice drip, and isn't certain if she's glad to see winter's passing or instinctively sorry that the thing she has the most power over is leaving the world. Spring has always been bittersweet for her. But she tells Leliana only, "That's fine. What about the Crows?"

"The Inquisition can't afford the Crows," Leliana says, with a wry curve to her mouth.

"And still no word from your Crow contact? Can you put some people on finding him? What about the Dalish? Do we have any reach there?"

"There's a clan on the Exalted Plains that seems to view us with good will," Leliana muses. "But the clans are all very distinct from one another, and I'm told the clans near Arlathan forest — which I assume is what you want the Crows to search? — are… very territorial."

"No answer on tracking your Crow contact down, I see," Heloise says.

Leliana turns to face her, and her expression is serious. "If Zevran decides he wants to contact us, he will. But he's more likely to kill any agents I send looking for him." Hel must make some sort of horrified expression, because Leliana just gives her a faintly distant look and says, "He has his reasons."

And she calls this man a friend, apparently. They must have met during the Blight.

Which reminds her. Hel tears her gaze away from the slowly-thawing mountain, and asks Leliana, "About Morrigan… You didn't trust her at the Winter Palace. Do you believe she's telling us the truth now?"

Leliana is quiet for a long moment. She turns to look out the window, then crosses to the railing and looks out over it, gazing down on the rotunda's other floors.

"Morrigan has always been self-serving, but I do not believe she wants us to fail." Leliana pauses, and her distant expression turns to a bitter smile. "A victory for Corypheus is a loss for the world. _All_ the world, including her and her son."

"That's not an answer. You've been rather evasive today."

"It's as much an answer as I have. Do I trust her? No. Is she telling the truth? Most likely, though we'd both be fools to think she's told us everything." A pause, and Leliana adds, "She's a spider. She weaves webs. Just because she's not looking to eat us this time doesn't mean we won't get caught."

What a ringing endorsement. Hel sighs. "Well, do what you can. I'll see if there are any other scholars of elven ruins hiding among our mage allies. _Not_ Solas, of course." His virulent dislike of Morrigan has made for plenty of tense moments. She doesn't need more.

How Leliana manages to make her smile both perfectly friendly and damnably enigmatic, Heloise will never know. Something about her hood, and the glint in her eyes, maybe. Or maybe Hel is just too aware that her spymaster keeps secrets.

* * *

In this vein, two weeks pass. Morrigan and Solas spend their time poring over ancient tomes, while Leliana's scouts bring in sketched maps. Fiona's people have no assistance to offer — if she'd wanted eleven treatises on veilfire, a study of rumored shapeshifting practices among the ancient elves, and advanced runic studies, though, she'd have had them easily — but they do, at least, stay out of the way and refrain from practicing fire or ice magic near Skyhold's library.

Josephine spends much of the fortnight either passing messages between various nobles and dignitaries or preparing for the arrival of one of Skyhold's most important guests to date. Personally, Hel wishes Josie would just leave that second matter to the chamberlain; Maker knows Josie's got enough on her hands trying to set up some sort of diplomatic meeting between King Alistair of Ferelden and Empress Celene.

As it is, the servants scour one of the more spacious rooms, replacing the simple straw mattress with one of goosedown, polishing the wood furnishings until they gleam and replacing the threadbare rugs with luxurious carpets, woven in Seheron, of blue and gray. Josephine drags her into the room daily, to supervise the replacement of the windows and the addition of fine linens.

She honestly has never much cared about what decorations Skyhold uses. She knows that the bird of prey — a symbol, in the Marches, of both strength and freedom — figures heavily in the Great Hall, because she sees the gilded statues whenever she sits her throne, with its labyrinthine backing. And she knows that Josephine has had most of the windows replaced with fine Orlesian glass, no few of them stained to depict the Inquisition's eye-and-sword heraldry.

Josephine uses that same glass in what will be Ser Ghyslain's guest quarters.

"Image can be powerful," she tells Heloise. "It creates impressions. It can help us find a point of commonality — or it can remind someone of who and what we are."

One of the servants looks up at that, but then goes back to his task. The fine linen sheets have been washed already to remove the dust of travel, and then pressed with a hot iron. They fairly snap as he flicks them into the air, then draws them deftly down to cover the mattress.

Hel flashes Josephine a grin, and knows it's the same crooked smile she sometimes gives Cullen, when he's being particularly himself. "You know, if you want to talk about our image, there's always establishing Inquisition camps in far flung corners of the Orlesian desert."

Josephine turns a scandalized look on her. "Don't you dare! He is most certainly already across the Waking Sea — he would be in Skyhold before you were even as far west as Val Royeaux!"

Well, there goes that plan, apparently. Hel thinks longingly of the warm golden sands in the Western Approach. She's heard that the Hissing Wastes — a place with too much Venatori activity for such an empty wasteland — are so hot they can only be travelled by night. She's seen enough moon-silvered sand dunes to know she'd find it hauntingly, starkly beautiful.

And it'd be much more useful to the Inquisition than waiting around here, watching servants prepare a bedchamber and being stabbed with pins by a tailor.

"I'll stay put," Hel assures her.

* * *

It really shouldn't surprise her that neither Blackwall nor Cullen like the idea of a stranger in Skyhold whose sole intention is to pay suit to the Inquisitor. They don't even know Ser Ghyslain's story, but neither of them need to: the idea seems mad enough. Leliana probably _does_ know, but she's said nothing of it. Still, Heloise has seen her look, very occasionally, to Sera and Iron Bull during those rare times the Inner Circle all eat together.

Hel suspects those nights will be far less rare, once Ser Ghyslain has arrived. And she's not sure she wants to know just what Leliana is trying to communicate with those looks.

But it's Dorian who shows the most simple sympathy. Then again, Dorian is the closest one to being aware of just how fraught her relationship with her family is. His own family connections are complicated, and there are a good many nights of late drinking before she retires to her rooms.

In fact, she and Dorian and Cullen are all in Skyhold's garden, at the chess table, when the next letter arrives. Dorian has a glass of Antivan brandy in his hand, while Cullen is staring intently at the game. Whoever originally set up the table managed to find the one spot in the garden that gets the most afternoon sun, aside from the plants, and she feels surprisingly warm for early spring in the mountains.

Hel is just savoring the citrus-tomato scent of elfroot that the wind has carried to them when she sees Cullen stiffen. He looks vaguely hunted, and his cheeks turn pink. Dorian's gaze flicks to Cullen's face, but then both men stand. Hel glances over her shoulder, and she sees why — 

Josephine. Josephine, with a startled but pleased smile curling around her lips, and one of the messenger tubes that Leliana's spies send by raven in her hand.

"Inquisitor," Josie says, and Hel can hear the thrum of contained excitement in her voice. "I have word from one of Leliana's people."

"He's on his way then?" Hel tries to sound, if not enthused, then at least interested rather than resigned. At the way Josephine's eyes catch her own, she's not sure she succeeded.

Josie sounds much more subdued when she says, "We can expect him within the week. I'll arrange a banquet for his arrival. And of course there must be a public audience."

"An audience?" Cullen demands. "What in Andraste's name for?"

"To greet him officially, of course." Josephine casts a puzzled look in Cullen's direction.

"Maker's breath, you've had plenty of dignitaries at Skyhold before, and a simple handshake in your office sufficed. Why waste Skyhold's throne — and my and Leliana's time — on greeting someone who's only here for a frivolous purpose?"

"Marriage is hardly frivolous, Commander. This is very much a political play in the Grand Game, although it would be better, of course, if he were Orlesian. It cannot be done behind closed doors."

"It's a personal matter of the Inquisitor's. I see no reason —"

"Now, now, I'm sure the Inquisitor is very fond of you both, no need to argue," Dorian says, though his eyes are sharp on Cullen, wicked and considering. "But these sorts of politics don't play well if you play them quietly. No, we'll shout it from the rooftops that our lovely Inquisitor might have found her perfect match —"

Heloise has to stifle a bitter snort at _that_ ludicrous idea, but Dorian just continues on, smoothly, "And when we're done with him, we'll shout from the rooftops that he simply wasn't worthy."

"The Inquisition would never be so gauche." But rather than look insulted, Josephine simply seems amused. As this is a woman who can destroy marriages with a whisper in the right ear and a glove on the wrong table, Hel has no doubt that whatever subtle response Josephine is planning, it will be far more crushing.

Cullen, on the other hand, looks to Hel. He's calmer as he says, "It would seem I've been overruled." 

She just tilts her head. "It has to be done."

"I don't see the wisdom of it, but I'll trust your decision." A crooked smile. "And here I was dreading the day Josephine and Leliana used _me_ as bait. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should return to my duties. Shall we finish another time?"

"Of course," she tells him, and she watches him bow and leave. Dorian, too, watches him go, and then turns a significant glance on Heloise. She has no idea what he's trying to say with it. She's not sure she wants to.

She really can't afford this foolish attachment. Especially now.

* * *

Ser Ghyslain Penzance, second son of the head of House Penzance — twentieth most prestigious family in Ostwick — and former Knight-Captain of the Ostwick Circle of Magi, arrives at Skyhold three days later. By all reports, he traveled from Amaranthine up into the mountains on horseback, without men at arms, with only a pair of shaggy pack ponies and a donkey cart to carry his baggage.

If he wanted to seem a man made half-mad with desperate affection, he's done a decent job of it. What's worse, he arrives in the middle of yet another War Council. Josephine's eyes gleam with excitement before she catches sight of Heloise, and then the ambassador has the sense to dim her enthusiasm somewhat. Morrigan, of course, turns pale golden eyes on Hel, thoughtful and calculating.

"Have someone show him to the throne," Hel sighs. "Can you accept me standing on the steps to it, or do I actually have to be seated to receive him, just for the look of it?"

"You have some objection to receiving him so?" Leliana is nothing if not sharp, and her very question draws Josephine's attention.

"Cullen was right," she says, and shrugs. "It's a personal matter, not a formal judgment by the Inquisition."

She could swear she sees the corner of Cullen's mouth twitch up and his shoulders relax, but when she looks his way, he seems much the same as ever. 

Her noncommittal reply didn't manage to get Leliana's knowing eyes off her. It has at least assuaged Josephine's worry, although Hel knows it will be back. And Morrigan, as always, just watches, slotting pieces and habits away. Storing up information like Sera hoarding arrows.

Still, she's standing on the top step before the throne when Ser Ghsylain finally makes it through the gauntlet of the stables, the servants to take his personal effects, and marching up the several flights of stairs from the lower courtyard to the main hall. Leliana stands below the dais, though still roughly at Hel's right hand, while Jospehine stands at her left. Cullen and Cassandra round out the ensemble, though they stand nearer the door. Cullen before Leliana, Cassandra before Josephine.

Hel vaguely wonders, before he strides into view, if it says something about her, that she seats a spy and a diplomat at her right and left hands, and leaves more honest warfare a step below. At least Cassandra will be able and in position to intervene, if Ghyslain tries anything.

And then she sees him, and for an instant, she can't breathe.

Three years hasn't much changed Ser Ghyslain. He's still tall and broad-shouldered. He wears a simple tunic and trousers, though all of fine make, and a thick Fereldan coat with fur lining. His skin is paler than hers, but that's no great difficulty, and he's still swarthier than most of the population of Ferelden. He could pass as a pale-skinned Rivaini, perhaps. The sun that comes in through the glass catches his hair, adds a riot of red and gold to what could have been simple brown.

His eyes are still the kind of blue that cuts, even from across the room.

Behind him, a pair of servants staggers under the weight of a wooden chest. He stops a respectful distance from Cullen and Cassandra, his eyes never leaving her face, and gives her an exact bow.

"Inquisitor Trevelyan," he says.

Hel inclines her head. "Ser Penzance. Welcome to Skyhold." That last is just enough less formal than the appropriate ritual phrase — _Be welcome in Skyhold_ — that it may mask the coldness of her voice.

But her advisers all shift where they stand. Even if Ghyslain hasn't heard it, they have. Cullen actually looks over at her, and his brow draws down, while Cassandra's mouth draws into a tight line. Hel can't see Leliana's reaction, and as spymaster, she likely gives no outward sign, and Josephine's shoulders only tense for an instant. No, her spymaster and her diplomat are much better at concealing their reactions.

Ghyslain continues on smoothly. Either he notices nothing amiss, or sees some need to ignore it. 

"Thank you for allowing my visit," he says. His voice carries just as easily as hers does, ringing off stone wall and stone floor and fine Orlesian glass. There's a trick of the light on him that bathes him in a white glow. "It is both an honor and a pleasure to be here, Your Worship."

She tilts her head, considering, and is very, very glad she's standing at her full height atop a dais. She's not at all physically imposing, and she craves any advantage over this man that she can find.

Hel lets the silence drag on. Not long. Josephine would never forgive her, and she needs Ghyslain not to think there's anything truly awry here. But just long enough to make her point: he is in her castle, amidst her Inquisition, and he is not the one in command here.

He can't hurt her here.

"Please," she says at last, just as Ghyslain's gaze has moved from her to Cassandra, either wary because of her expression or some innate templar sense of a Seeker's presence. "Allow me to introduce you to the Inquisition's war council. At my right hand is my seneschal, Lady Leliana of Orlais, and at my left is Lady Josephine Montilyet, the Inquisition's Ambassador. Nearest you is Ser Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition's Forces, and across from him is Cassandra Pentaghast, Right Hand of the Divine, a former Seeker, and a member of the royal house of Nevarra."

Ghyslain's smile is open and sincere. "A true pleasure to meet you all." Even his accent makes him sound guileless; he's of a lower social stratum than she, and speaks with a broader lilt, round-sounding and easy. It's the voice of a man who drinks huge mugs of bad ale and talks of jousting without taking his eyes off the year's cheesewheel race.

The voice of a good man. A fair man, who only wants to protect people from the dangers of magic. Not given to summary executions.

"Surely you must need to refresh yourself. Josephine," Hel says, never taking her eyes off this good-sounding fellow, with his fine clothes and his finer features, "can you please have someone show Ser Penzance to his quarters?"

Josephine smiles. "Of course, Inquisitor. Ser Penzance, we will all dine an hour past sundown, unless you need to rest from your journey?"

"No, no," he assures her. "I'll be quite well with just an hour's rest or so." His gaze snaps to Heloise, and he adds, "I look forward to resuming our acquaintance."

Heloise's smile feels like her mouth has frozen in some awful shape. Still, she forces herself to say, "As do I. I will see you anon, Ser Penzance."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this now because, for serious, Trespasser drops in like four days... And I think we all know how much writing, or even thinking about writing, I'm going to be doing when the DLC hits. Also, now on the right fic!

Heloise spends the hours until dinner closeted in Skyhold's main library, re-reading what little Skyhold has on the ancient elves and their nation, their holdings. Their ruins. But if there's anything new to be learned, it's not hiding in the obscure passages or footnotes. She's going to have to rely on Morrigan's research and Leliana's spies to track Corypheus's movements, and hopefully get ahead of him.

And yet, for all that it doesn't net her the results she'd like, secluding herself away with books and candles and parchment feels good for her soul. Some people sing the Chant or hymns to the Maker, some people plant gardens — Hel collates references.

Hel doesn't stop collecting references and copying down potentially important passages until Dorian swoops down upon her. There's something comforting about the scent of old books and scraps of parchment, about the sound of her quill scratching and the way her thoughts narrow to the passages she's copying and the note she adds. But it ends, of course, with Dorian arching an eyebrow at her. He mocks a disapproving cluck and shakes his head.

"Banquet, Inquisitor. You have to dress for that, you know."

Hel arches a brow. "And you don't?"

"Oh, I do. But I'm always handsome and dashing and well-dressed. _My_ only worry is wrangling Cullen out of that coat and into something decent, and seeing if I can find some sort of shirt for Iron Bull." His smile darts across his face, and he waves a hand as if to shoo her on.

Hel sighs, notes that ink has stuck her sleeve to her arm, and makes her way out of the library. The staircase down is always surprisingly cool, and she can't resist an envious look as she passes through Solas's study. _He's_ curled up in his armchair with a book, a quill, several pieces of foolscap, and a glass of wine. She spares a moment to track the progress of his murals and wonders when or how he learned to paint. She'd been required to take lessons for a season, before the Circle, and had wound up mostly with one arm stuck to the palette and an indeterminate smear of colors blotching the other. Are there spirits of Art or Creativity in the Fade?

She's just entered the Great Hall, on her way to her quarters, when Vivienne intercepts her. She reaches out with one hand, her mouth curving just a fraction.

"There you are, my dear. I was hoping I wouldn't have to fetch you from that tower myself."

"I take it you're going to make sure I'm presentable?"

"My dear, you will be nothing so mediocre as simply 'presentable.'" A pause, and Vivienne's smile widens, enough that her eyes narrow very slightly. She could be planning, or she could simply be enjoying the thought of what lies ahead. "Tonight, you will scintillate."

"Desirable, yet chaste," Hel says, with a sigh. "I suppose I should thank Josephine for calling her tailor the minute we heard about this… this…"

"Courtship?" Vivienne arches a brow, and she is both supplying a word and suggesting that Heloise not use a different one.

Hel uses the one she meant anyway. " _Ordeal_."

The narrowed gaze takes on a disapproving cast, and there is very mild reproach in Vivienne's tone when she says, "It can't be so terrible. He seemed perfectly charming." What she really means, of course, is that Hel is free to feel however she likes, but shouldn't cast any doubt on this match in public.

When did she learn to see so much in so little, and was it Vivienne or Cole who taught her more of it?

"Yes," Heloise says anyway, because the replies crowd her mouth, tangling on her tongue: you don't know him. He's good at charming. He's good at _seeming_. But she can say none of them, and there's no purpose in arguing. A highborn Ostwicker templar paying court to her looks good for the Inquisition. His past — his _crimes_ — need not be relevant.

But Vivienne registers it. It's there, in the faint flicker of her eyelids, the way the curve of her mouth tightens for an instant. Her voice is quiet, though nothing like soft, when she says, "Whatever he was, my dear, you are stronger, now. You have risen where he cannot touch, and will only rise higher."

Hel says it again: "Yes." And then she says, "I suppose I should go make myself scintillate."

And Vivienne's smile turns at once genuinely excited and rather predatory. "An excellent thought."

In order to keep pace with Vivienne beside her, Hel finds her her ink-splattered trudge becoming a smooth, sweeping glide through the hall and toward the door. A servant carrying wood for the fireplace turns her head, openly staring after the indelicate Inquisitor and the statuesque Madame de Fer. Hel makes it a point to keep facing forward.

They'll stare a lot more at dinner.

* * *

Vivienne and Josephine fling every single gown Heloise owns onto her bed. As she only owns seven, and three of them were sewn in the last month, this is not precisely difficult. Vivienne disappears for a few moments, and returns with Leliana — who carries an armful of fabric — and a jewel case. Josephine sorts through Hel's day-to-day wardrobe, which consists mostly of simple tunics and trousers, with a few finer shirts.

"How did I let you meet the tailor unsupervised?" Josephine asks, and though she doesn't sound despairing, Hel is sure that she must feel at least a little of it. She's never been good at feminine, and she's certainly no good at being feminine while also fighting for her life. And that wouldn't have been much of a problem, if not for this little political snag.

"I brought a few other options. If worst comes to worst, we can sew her into something of mine," Leliana says. She pauses, frowns, and admits, "But I don't have much to suit her coloring."

Hel knows that Leliana means well. And she's long accepted that her skin is more the color of of Ostwick's twilight-darkened city walls than the beautiful, creamy, midafternoon sunlight-on-limestone that her siblings all have. A legacy of her father's family, and the blend of Tevinter and Antivan heritage that makes up the _really_ old families in Ostwick. Still, she spares a moment to stare at the inside of her wrist, where her skin is just slightly paler, and wish the rest of her could be that color.

"If your tailor isn't a very great fool, there will be something pale with green accents," Vivienne says.

Heloise looks at the gowns on the bed and sees no green anywhere. Why indeed did Josephine trust her to meet with a couturier alone?

The preparations for the banquet continue in that vein, until Heloise has been brushed, handed a kohl stick, discussed, advised, discussed frankly, made to try on three gowns, and then finally been sewn into something provided by Vivienne. White and silver, yes, and it makes her skin fairly glow, but no green in evidence, until Leliana pulls out a strand of fine-woven silver chain. There are carved hunks of jade on it, and to be honest, the design looks inspired by the Qunari, though Hel is certain Seheron doesn't make jewelry.

"The Rivaini style was quite daring and fashionable, a few years ago," Leliana says in response to Hel's arched eyebrow. She drapes it over Hel's neck, then adjusts it so that a glimmering knot of silver and jade sits — well, scandalously low.

Honestly, Hel isn't entirely sure that much of her body should be visible. She's been fortunate enough, in both her Circle of residence and in her own actions over the years, that she carries scars only on her back, so far. But still, she can't imagine walking down to dinner baring the space between her breasts. And the damnable chain will draw the eye right down into it, too. She has the terrible feeling that gazes will fall right down her neckline and never be able to climb out.

"Something is missing," Josephine says, peering at her.

"Carmine," Vivienne says, even as Leliana eyes Hel and tells them all, "Eardrops. And shoes, of course."

Hel takes a breath, and when she speaks, the calm of her voice surprises her. "My ears aren't pierced. The Ostwick Circle didn't allow it." She'd expected to sound bitter, and yet, she doesn't actually _feel_ bitter about it. Lace and embroidery and jewelry — these things were never for her. She hadn't even owned her own pair of dancing slippers after she went to the Circle.

Leliana shares a surprised look with Vivienne, but after having Heloise run the bristle brush through her hair one final time, they all decide that carmine is the only thing missing, and head out to attend their own wardrobes.

Hel crumbles carmine between her fingers, then dips her finger in a tub of beeswax and spreads the resultant paste on her lips. She considers the face that looks back at her, then wipes crumbs of carmine from her fingers with a damp cloth and makes sure that there are no smudges from the stuff on her lips. She runs her tongue over her teeth, then sighs and stands.

Of course Leliana left her a pair of slippers at the edge of the rug. Hel wiggles her toes on the soft, plush carpet, thinking of golden sunlight and a window seat that overlooked the canal, and then she steps into them. They're pretty and fairly functional, for a noblewoman's shoes. No jewels, no pearls. She nonetheless wishes she could go down in her Inquisition formal wear and a pair of boots that fit her legs like gloves.

* * *

Heads turn toward her when she enters the Great Hall. She has to stop in the doorway and stare at what Josephine has ordered done: the low tables lined in crisp white cloths, their benches covered in long, plush looking carpets — or maybe pallets — of cloth-of-silver. The torches and fires still blaze, but servants have strung white paper lanterns and faceted glass baubles, and lit candles within, casting a strangely cool glow over everything. If she doesn't look directly at anything, the edges of her vision catch the sparkles from the glass brilliants.

But rather than let the Inquisitor eat at one of the banquet tables that usually runs lengthwise along the hall, the servants have taken one of the tables and moved it to the foot of the dais. They covered it in a creamy white table cloth as well, but rather than benches, each place setting has its own chair. Not unusual in a noble house, but the Inquisition has never much bothered with it.

And the Inquisition has turned out in finery. Dorian has not only managed to wrestle Iron Bull into one of the uniform jackets they'd all had sewn for the Winter Palace escapade, but Varric got Cole into a shirt with fewer than nine patches and a less ragged pair of trousers. Cole hasn't abandoned his hat, though. As Cassandra would say, one takes one's victories where one can.

Sera has already seated herself at the far end of the table, and Blackwall sits beside her. Blackwall, at least, wears the uniform, though Sera has dressed much the same as she always has. Either Josephine or the servants have figured out Sera's appetite, because someone has placed a tray of toasted bread covered in tomatoes and oil near them. Hel can't help but smile as Sera reaches out, slender fingers dancing until she picks a slice of bread piled high.

Hel makes her way to the high table, and sees that the central chair has what Sera calls the Hairy Eyeball symbol of the Inquisition: the sword, the flame, the eye. It dominates the chair, elaborate scrollwork on the very top.

Well, at least she knows where she's sitting. She sees no identifying marks on any of the other chairs, so she supposes it's a free for all. 

A servant brings her a goblet of wine as soon as she's settled herself. Heloise accepts it, eying the fine brass chalice and the red glint of the wine within. She raises it to her mouth — 

And sets it down on the table, untasted, thinking of scarred cupid's bow lips and a champagne glass lying in shards. She knows, of course, that her own servants wouldn't try to poison her, probably. And yet her stomach twists at the thought of drinking tonight, even as some part of her longs to dull her wits. If she could just find the pleasant, stinging numbness, then this might not be such a terrible evening.

Josephine arrives in the middle of Hel's secret, tiny crisis about the wine. She's beautiful and gentle in rippling blue silk that reminds Hel of the sea, and selects a seat near Varric's end of the table, because of course she does. Thankfully, she's close enough to Hel that they could lean into each other for a few quiet words. She eyes the plate of bread that Sera has, by now, mostly demolished, and then waves for the servants, who bring out several more. 

Only one goes near Sera; the others, they place randomly around the table.

After that, the rest of the Inner Circle trickle in. Cullen takes a seat near Iron Bull's side of the table, which also happens to be near Dorian and Blackwall. Solas sits beside Cole, perfectly visible behind Varric and wearing the garish red uniform. Vivivenne has elected to sit on that side of the table, though closer to Varric and Josephine. Leliana and Ghyslain are the last to arrive.

Ghyslain surveys the table, eyebrows up and expression mildly pole-axed. There's a wrinkle between his brows that makes him look like a confused puppy.

If she were a Fereldan, that might be a more charitable thought. As it is, she finds the combination of the confused puppy expression and the slim wooden box in his hands to be almost pathetic. She can only assume it's deliberate.

Leliana smiles at them all and nods her greetings to the table, then takes the seat right next to Josephine. This leaves one last seat open for Ghyslain: the seat next to Hel. But the second thing Hel notices about Leliana's entrance is that rather than dress in Orlesian fashions like Josephine and Vivienne, she's chosen a slim, Fereldan-style gown. The reason for the dress becomes more clear when Hel sees the silvery glints in the dress's dashed sleeves.

The Leliana she met in the Dark Future had seemed more an archer, but Hel supposes she shouldn't be surprised that her spymaster is equally at home with tiny knives. She'd certainly been ready to stab people in the discussion about the traitorous agent that Hel had walked in on, back in Haven.

Perhaps more important is the fact that Leliana would not be coming to dinner armed if she didn't know about the Abrogation. To the uninformed, Ghyslain is easy enough to write off as an ambitious fop who was once a templar. Not the sort to suddenly turn into a threat at dinner, particularly when his plan of advancement relies on Heloise being _alive_.

"Maker's breath," Ghyslain says, cheerful and easy and his voice still using that damnable over-friendly eastern drawl, "look at you all!"

His eyebrows arch again before he takes the final seat. No more leaning toward Leliana or Josephine for her, it would seem. She's going to be relying on Cassandra — seated at her right hand — to retain her sanity. The box goes on the table between them, and Hel notes that it bears his family crest.

"As I said earlier," Hel says, reaching for the toasted bread, "welcome to Skyhold."

"We're what you might call the Inquisitor's disciples," Varric says. His mouth is crooked, the twist of his lips sardonic and self-deprecating. "Some of us are better at that than others."

"I would have said inner circle," Solas says. He grabs a decanter and pours himself a glass of wine. Hel notes that servants have poured glasses for the humans and Cole, but have left Bull, Sera, Solas, and Varric to their own devices. She'll need a word with Josephine about that later.

Blackwall lifts his wineglass to his mouth, pausing it just as it touches his lips, and gives Ghyslain a considering stare. "Comrades and advisers, maybe." He doesn't sound angry or hostile, precisely — more just polite — but it's not the friendlier tones he's used with the rest of the Inquisition. He still disapproves of the entire idea, it would seem.

"No need to justify why you're here to me." Ghyslain smiles at the table at large. Or, well, breezily quirks his lips for a moment before he adds, "To speak plainly, I'm just honored to be invited to join you."

A few of the people around the table relax at his tone, but Hel sees Leliana's eyes narrow for a moment, and Bull turns his head so he can look at Ghyslain full on with his good eye. Josephine's face remains a polite mask, but Hel could swear she saw Josie's eyelids flicker.

"You are the Inquisitor's guest," Josephine says, "and an old acquaintance of hers, no? We are… curious about you."

Ghyslain's eyes flick to Hel. And even if nobody else can, she can see the question in his face. What has she told them, he's wondering. What news have they heard? Still, he reaches out for his already filled wineglass and the expression smooths itself away.

"I'm afraid there's not much to know. Third son of a decent family, not too prestigious. Joined the Order at ten, took vows at sixteen." He pauses after he sips, and Hel can see his mouth twist down for an instant before he forces it to curve up again. Skyhold's steward did not, evidently, stock a decent vintage for this banquet. Poor Josephine; she'd had such hopes for this dinner. "Spent my life in the Circle."

"Such a boring fellow, you," Hel says, dryly, but she can see in the way he looks over at her that they both know, in the he knows/she knows circular way, that he's been oversimplifying. "You forgot to tell them about the time you organized a cheese race on the Campo."

"That wasn't _all_ me, now. I seem to recall Daveth having something to do with it." A pause, and Ghyslain performs a rueful, abashed grimace. He even flushes. "And a lot of cider. Maker, Knight-Commander Morcant near had my hide flayed off me." Ghyslain pauses, and the brief flash of pain that crosses his face is unfeigned.

Hel puts that pain together with what she knows of Morcant's disappearance from the Carracks and wonders at what she's thought all these years. That Ghyslain and Morcant had been close had been common knowledge in the Carracks, but Hel hadn't thought simple affection would stop his ambition. And it had seemed suspicious to anyone who had been watching, that Knight-Commander Morcant had gone missing and then Knight-Captain Ghyslain, a man all knew she trusted more than her next breath, had taken complete control of the Circle.

"She was a good person," Hel offers.

Ghyslain only nods agreement. "One of the best I ever knew. But a lot of good people died in those days, and this is a banquet. Shall we speak of something happier?"

"Let's," Leliana says, leaning into the table and peering at Ghyslain. "Shall we speak of what might be in the box?"

Ghyslain's face colors. He doesn't turn red or pink, exactly. His skin is too dark for it. But she sees his cheeks darken, and then he hands the box to Heloise. "I thought you'd like this better than me sending three sheep and some wheat to your mother." He chuckles, and says, "Your mother would probably rather this, too. I've no idea where she'd keep sheep in a city townhouse."

Her mother, Heloise knows, would handle the gift with aplomb. Any meat on the table has to come from somewhere, and the cook's Rivaini. He'd have plenty of ideas how to cook them.

All she says aloud is, "Isn't that Markham? No, Kirkwall."

Ghyslain nods to the box before he says, "Still, that's for you. You deserve better than just the traditional gifts."

"Thank you," Hel says automatically. She notes that Cullen has stiffened in his seat, and that Dorian's eyes have crinkled in amusement.

She pulls the lid off the box, revealing a smaller box-shaped package wrapped in painted silk and tied with ribbon. It's low and square, and Hel unwraps it, then sets it on the table. She draws a quick breath in through her nose, just to steady herself, and then lifts this second box's lid.

She should never have read _Hard In Hightown_. It left her expecting something awful, like Carrington's ear, or something she'd left behind when the Carracks had fallen. Maybe a vial of the diseased canal water, under the guise of sentiment.

But he's brought her jewelry. She lifts one of a pair of emerald eardrops from within the box, and notes that the jeweler carved the crest of the Circle Of Magi into both emeralds.

"Thank you," she says, and turns to flash him a smile. "They're lovely." She sets them back in the box and pulls out the prize piece: a pendant on a gold chain, shaped in Andraste's sunburst and accented with rubies or garnets. It glitters in the light, heavy and extravagant, and Hel knows she will never, ever wear it.

"Go on, try on the eardrops, my dear," Vivienne says, and though her smile is wide and her eyes narrow, there's something just a touch frosty in her tone. She knows, of course, what Hel's answer must be, and for some reason, she wants Hel to say it out loud.

Why?

"I… can't," she says. "But the pendant is quite beautiful, and they're all of very fine craftwork. It was a thoughtful gesture, Ser Ghyslain. I appreciate it, I do."

Cassandra looks curiously at her. "Can't try them on? Why not?"

"I never had my ears pierced," Hel says. She reaches for her goblet, just to have something to do with her hands.

"Few Circle mages do, my dear. If the First Enchanter doesn't outlaw earrings for reasons of safety, the Knight-Commander will to prevent vanity." Vivienne sounds bored, mostly, but her gaze is on Ghyslain, and Hel abruptly realizes what she's thinking: sloppy. Careless. It was thoughtless of Ghyslain to bring her a gift he should have known she could not wear. And she's making damn sure everyone knows it.

Clever, clever Vivienne.

"Oh," Ghyslain says. "Maker's breath, how did I not even consider — I wanted you to have something beautiful, something that represented the Carracks; I never intended —"

"There's nothing to apologize for," she says, and holds one of the dangling emeralds up to her ear. It surely must glint green amid the dark fall of her hair. "They're still beautiful. I've been considering piercing my ears, in any case."

"They bring out your eyes," Ghyslain tells her, and the compliment sounds genuine. He sounds taken aback, struck dumb, and for a moment Heloise almost feels beautiful.

She isn't, though. And he's a liar. She _knows_ he's a liar.

The moment pauses, stretching like a soap bubble or the long drag of nails in her skin. Slipping from her grasp as she tries to balance the unthinking, reflexive fear with awareness that he can't hurt her. He's set her completely off balance with a thoughtless gift, and it galls her.

And then the moment pops. The claws lift, and she turns her head, startled, toward the sound of Dorian's startled yelp.

"Andraste's sake, Cullen, that was the first decent wine I've been near since Halamshiral. I wanted to drink it, not bathe in it!"

Both Dorian and Cullen have jerked back away from the table and the spreading red puddle, and even Blackwall's set his goblet down. A servant darts in with a towel. Cullen's gone red to his ears. As if they all sense her gaze — or perhaps Josephine's — they flick looks in her direction.

Blackwall breaks the tension, even as Dorian mutters curses in Tevene and buffs at his uniform, by picking up the decanter — hand tight around its neck and careful of its broken handle — and saying, "I know we were hoping to see if he'd drown in the Aggregio, but wearing's not the same. Try harder next time."

Sera, of course, is laughing, and Bull grins at the pair of them. Neither Sera nor Bull is in danger of soaking in the wine. Either they're too aware of their surroundings, or they got lucky.

Once the servants have cleaned the table and carried away the offending decanter of Aggregio, Josephine motions another over and says, very softly, "The next course, I believe."

Hel sees an oblique, almost imperceptible nod, and then they bring in tureens of soup. She takes in a breath, and picks up the rich, warm citrus-and-spice scent of heated elfroot and lemon, with notes of thyme. Most of the table has just ladled soup into their bowls — and Hel notes that Sera seems reluctant to put the spoon back into tureen, on her end of the board — when the servants bring loaves of bread, platters of fine cheese, and dishes of herb butter. All of this, she assumes, for dipping. The bread is so fresh from the oven that it wafts steam into the air, and smells of rosemary and prophet's laurel.

The conversation goes better throughout this course. Leliana and Vivienne keep their side of the table moving about in light talk. The words are airy, easy, and Varric laughs. Cole doesn't, though. He doesn't touch his food, either, simply sits in his chair and looks around. He seems to have a hard time drawing his feverish gaze away from Ghyslain.

She isn't sure whether she's thankful or not that Ghyslain doesn't notice. She's not even sure Ghyslain can see Cole. She tries to watch him without seeming to stare, and so far as she can tell, every time his eyes move in Cole's direction, they skip right over him.

The next course is a dish clearly in honor of either her Ostwicker heritage or Ghyslain's, or perhaps for both of them. She can smell that unique mixture of fish and grape, of seasalt and wine and spice, even as Skyhold's servants bring out the silver trays, before they're near the high table. They set them on the table, and Heloise looks down.

Eelflesh, cooked in a slurry of red wine, accented with sprigs of spindleweed. The cook has sculpted the skin of the largest eel to look whole again, then put its eyes out and replaced them with the red berries of the prophet's laurel.

Hel's mouth waters.

"I hear this is a favored dish in Ostwick?" Josephine says, and there's a smile playing around her lips. She has good reason to be proud.

Ghyslain's eyes are round and wide, and he makes no attempt to hide his smile. "Maker's breath, I don't think I've had eel —"

She doesn't care. She doesn't listen to him, staring at the red berries in the eelskin and the red sliced spindleweed.

Four years for her, or perhaps more. Fish had been plentiful in Ostwick, but the largest eels had almost always gone to the noble houses, and more rarely to the Carracks, given that many of the older families kept their townhouses in the flooded part of the city, within a quick gondola ride of the fishermen's wharfs. For Hel, once the Carracks had fallen, there had been nowhere to go but inland, into the gentle slopes north of the city proper, where the shepherds ranged.

"Ostwickers," Varric says. "Cheese races and weird fish recipes." He gives a heavy sigh, but he's only joking, and she sees his smile. "We're not having a cheese race here, are we?"

It's Blackwall who laughs, and says, "What, you think we'd do that to Sera's supply of butter?"

Ghyslain dishes eel onto her plate, making sure to drizzle it thoroughly in the red wine sauce, and then serves himself. His smile is crooked, for all that his face is unscarred. His mouth is wide, lips sensuous and dark, and how he projects boyish charm she doesn't know.

Still, the course goes well, despite Cole's constant staring. He doesn't eat anything, of course, and he doesn't seem interested in looking away. Hel tries not to worry about that. Varric does succeed in drawing his attention away, and he relaxes every now and again. Josephine and Leliana keep Ghyslain focused on them, while Hel manages half a conversation with Solas.

The texture of the eel in her mouth is alike to tender chicken, but the cooks have managed to capture the natural mix of tuna and shellfish tastes in the eelflesh. She uses her fork to swirl a bite in the sauce, and between the tart-spice-sweet of the flesh and the tangy _pop_ of sweet brightness… It delights her mouth.

She's actually sorry when they've emptied all the dishes. But then the next course comes out. The cooks have hollowed out carrots, and roasted and hollowed fennel and celeriac. Then they filled it with a blend of soft, sharp goat cheese, minced spinach, and diced nuts.

Finger foods again. Hel reaches for one, and she hears Sera make a noise of pleasure.

"My compliments to your kitchen. Between this and the eel, I'm in love," Ghyslain jests. "I must write home forthwith and our parents can start the negotiations."

At Iron Bull's end of the table, somebody chokes. Blackwall and Dorian both laugh, but Hel is staring too hard at Ghyslain.

She wants to say: my lord will have his jape. But instead, she forces herself to find the confident, funny thing to say. "So long as you remember that my kitchen is worth nine sheep, write whatever you like."

Iron Bull actually closes his eye for a moment when he tries the next dish. It's pears poached in a pear cider. They serve it, of course, in a cider-and-white-wine-and-honey syrup, and though it doesn't compare to the eels, for Hel, she has to stop and savor each bite.

But the true crown of the banquet, aside from the eel, is its final course. A croquembouche: a cake, roughly three tiers tall, made of fist-sized pastry balls, shaped into a mountain-like cone and topped with sweet cream and nuts, all held together with threads of caramel and marchpane.

It delights everyone at the table, with the exception of Cole, who simply seems happy that the rest of them are happy. His gaze lights on Ghyslain, though, and she tenses for a moment. When Hel looks over at Iron Bull's side of the table, she sees Blackwall and Sera sharing a pile of pastries, while Dorian is staring bemusedly at a pastry covered in cream. Cullen's even taken one, and he seems to be debating between using his fork like a civilized person and just picking it up and biting in.

Hel looks over at Josephine, smiles wickedly, and abandons her fork. She ends up with fingers sticky with cream and marchpane and caramel. She licks them clean. Ghyslain and Vivienne don't set their forks down, but nearly everybody else does, and she hears Josephine's breathless laugh.

It's an excellent way to end a meal, and Hel sits back in her chair, flushed and a little thrilled. This damnable scheme of Josephine's might not be so terrible after all.

And then Ghyslain leans toward her, mouth at the shell of her ear, and says, "I said you deserved better than just the traditional gifts, but you deserve those too, and shall have them."

Hel can only nod, even as Ghyslain stands. "There are a few things I must gift to Her Worship," he tells the rest of the table. "I'll return anon."

Cullen's eyes have narrowed in suspicion, but everyone else lets him go in something like good cheer. They've had a meal of good food and good wine, and Ghyslain has been largely inoffensive. Cullen doesn't jump when Ghyslain claps him on the shoulder, but he seems less than friendly when he looks up.

"Can I beg your aid?" Ghyslain asks in that damnable broad accent, easy and open. "'tis no one-man job to carry the courting gifts, but I see no need to trouble the servants over it."

Hel watches Cullen frown heavily for a moment, but he stands from the chair regardless.

He and Ghyslain return lifting a heavy-looking wooden trunk between them. Sweat runs in tiny beads along Ghyslain's forehead as he and Cullen maneuver the trunk onto the floor before the table. Cullen rolls one shoulder before he shakes his head and returns to his seat. He looks almost exactly the same as when he'd left the Great Hall, no sign of exertion or discomfort save his frown.

Save the way she sees him throw back a glass of wine and then reach out to refill his glass from the decanter.

Ghyslain pops the lid on the trunk, scattering packing straw, and then withdraws a box wrapped in dyed linen. The first gift, she knows, must carry her family's crest, to honor her house and her parents.

He bows as he presents it to her.

Hel reaches out and unties the simple ribbon looped around the silk wrapping.

A trinkets box. She stares at the mahogany wood, at the way the wood gleams in the low light, and sees, emblazoned — carved so deep it's black in the lid — the horse and wave of House Trevelyan. There's a story about it, she knows, of one of the first Trevelyans outrunning the flood that had reclaimed a full quarter of Ostwick by riding a white horse.

"A perfect place to store the treasures you have brought me," she says. "Thank you, Ser Ghyslain."

There will be more, she knows. And indeed, Ghyslain has wrapped his second gift in linen also, though she can make out the shape of it. Short, slim. She is not surprised to unwrap a belt knife — and is not surprised to find the Penzance family arms worked into its pommel. If the first gift must honor her and her family, then the second must honor him and his.

Rather than praise the gift herself, she hands it off to Cassandra, who seems startled. Heloise only turns a bright, faintly inquisitive gaze on her and dips her eyes to the blade.

"You want my opinion?" 

Cassandra's eyes are wide, stretched, and at Hel's nod, Cassandra looks down. There's a long, long pause as she tests the balance and inspects the metal.

"Fine workmanship," she pronounces at last. "Dwarven steel?"

"I thank you again, Ser Ghyslain. You have honored my house, and you honor me with this gift." 

The words are rote, easy, and she's looking at Cole when she says it all. The boy-spirit-boy is tense and strained, prepared for… something. Some threat, perhaps, or maybe the weight of everything pressing down on everyone in this room is pressing down on him, too.

She's more curious about the third gift. He could choose one of any four or five paths, to indicate his faith, or his hope for future happiness, or his hope for future heirs, had he anything to be inherited. If this were a simple business arrangement, his third gift would be a subtle declaration of wealth.

The final gift, he presents in a simple pinewood box. To keep her from discerning its shape? Because to decorate it with dyed cloth would be gaudy?

Hel lifts the lid and sets it aside.

"I hope," Ghyslain says, softly, so softly, as she reaches in, "to honor us both with this. And I dearly hope you will find favor with my intentions."

Her fingers touch cool metal. The shape of it seems pleated, and her fingers cannot entirely describe it to her. It has a mouth, and within… pebbles? A pleated tube? She grips it by its neck and pulls it out, into the light.

She feels the creep of frost into the room, and yet the candles seem brighter. The whole world looks bright, and sharp. Frozen in place and made clear, limned in light.

"Thank you," she says, through lips that feel frozen in one place. Does her voice come out pained and pale, breathy, or is that just the roaring in her ears?

It's a vase, of course, filled with some manner of precious item. But the vase is a coppery, brassy gold, in the shape of a tongue of flame. She could easily imagine it in one of those bowls of fire that statues of Andraste hold.

Or in the Primalists' Solar, back in the Carracks.

Bronze bowls — for fire, for water, for ice. Leaded glass. The wind off the sea coming in through the windows. The scent of smoke, of salt, of ozone.

Ghyslain beams at her, and she says, "I… appreciate the sentiment behind it." Not that she has any idea what the sentiment behind it must be.

The sound of boots. The crackle of spells. Is she breathing? She tilts her head, forces a smile, and then opens her mouth to draw in a breath that crawls down her throat and into her lungs, sticky and hot.

"But it's not really a gift," Cole tells the rest of the table. He's quiet, but there's an intensity to his voice that makes him seem insistent. "It's the ear in the box. It smiles on the outside but all the glass means something and it all _cuts_. Hurting, not helping. Not giving happiness."

"Kid," Varric says, slowly. He reaches out a hand to steady the spirit, as if comforting him might help.

But it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. What could possibly comfort Compassion?

Cole's voice rises, and this time he really is insistent. "Giving gifts, sharing sweetness, carrying pieces of happiness in our hands and handing them over — this isn't that. This is canal water in a little vial, vile, diseased, wearing memory like a mask."

Vivienne's expression turns to distaste. It always does. Cole has always been a point of contention between them, almost emblematic of the differences in their thinking. "Your pet is disturbing our guest, Inquisitor."

And, indeed, Ghyslain's eyes are wide. He's trained them on Varric's hand —

And sees, she can tell in the way his brow knits, Varric holding onto nothing, even as Solas approaches that same hole in the world, speaking in low, soothing tones.

She can't think about Ghsylain right now. She can't even stand looking at him. Instead, she turns back to Cole — and hears Ghyslain round on someone, sounding appalled, betrayed — and says, "Cole. This isn't helping."

Cole turns to Solas. "They don't see. You know how to say it. How to weave the words in a way they'll understand. Help them see."

"Cole believes our guest's final gift was meant to cause the Inquisitor pain." Solas's voice is calm, level. He's the one point of calm in the room.

Not far enough away, Ghyslain is shouting at both Cullen and Cassandra. How he isn't _dead_ yet, Hel isn't sure, though she wouldn't give a fig for his chances come breakfast time.

Maker's breath. She cannot have this. She cannot let this come out. Leliana knows, because she knows everything, but she can't — 

It's like choking. The air is too thick. Her throat squeezes around it and her chest tightens at the thought. They can't know, or this will all go wrong. Josie's carefully laid plans will have to be put aside, and Hel won't allow that.

So she says, "Whether that's true or not, this isn't the time, and _this isn't helping_." Make him forget, she wants to ask Cole. Such a hypocritical thought. She's never asked Cole to do that to anyone, never gainsaid him, but always finding it quietly horrifying. For the best, mayhap, but still the one thing about him that has ever frightened her.

What's worse is: she's almost certain she doesn't have to ask. Cole doesn't have to try. Ghyslain will leave this room and by the time he reaches his guest quarters, he'll have forgotten all about Cole.

* * *

Josephine manages to empty the Great Hall with minimal chaos, eventually. There's a lot of shuffling, a lot of eyes on her. A lot of eyes on the stupid, stupid gift. But they'd all departed after reassuring themselves that whatever message Ghyslain had intended, he hadn't gotten to her. They had needed her to be strong, confident, amused, and she had found a way to give it to them.

All except Cole, whose fevered eyes had seen right through her. She doubts she fooled Iron Bull, either, and he might pose a problem. He has his own information network. If he does any digging —

He's probably already gone digging, she realizes. That he's said nothing has likely been because he trusts her to know her own mind in this. She can only hope he continues to keep his peace.

She's finally trudged her way to her quarters when her eyes light on a dark figure at the stair. The figure is tall, most likely male, but that's all she can make out.

Lightning dances at her fingertips, weaving over her palms and between her fingers, and in her left hand, the Anchor wakes.

"What, you would call down lightning on _me_ , Inquisitor?" Dorian's voice calls. He sounds somewhere between amused and indignant, but it's the kind of indignation he loves exaggerating, so she smiles and simply lets the lightning vanish. The air smells of a thunder-split sky for a few moments.

As she draws closer, she lifts her hand and prepares a Barrier spell. The lighted traceries on the ground — mathematical demarcations of the Barrier's borders — light up the corridor better than any torch, and she sees Dorian holds an amber bottle with a long, thin neck and a square base in one hand. It's an awkward-looking piece of glassware.

Hel waves her hand and the sigil vanishes, plunging them into a darkness lulled by distant light through the window and a few sputtering torches.

"I brought brandy," Dorian tells her. "And I think we need to talk."


End file.
